Blogging Advice

One of my cousin-in-laws asked for advice about having a successful blog. Evidently, she's tried a few times, and just can't manage to keep it up. Here's what I told her:

I have a few tips for successful blogging

1. Have a specific time of day to post. I generally do it first thing in the morning after I've read my email, but before I get involved in other things. I also encourage you to post every day, even if it's short. If you miss a day or two here and there, it's no big deal, but if you plan to post weekly, then when you miss once or twice, then it's been nearly a month since you wrote, and there's far too much to catch up with...and you know how that goes.

2. Have a theme -- Mine is poetry, but it can be about anything you like. I get bored with writing about my day to day stuff -- I just lived through it after all. With the poetry, I have an excuse to think/write about something other than the mundane goings on, but I often mention major events or things I've been thinking about. I've got a much better record of my life and thoughts and feelings writing about poetry than I ever achieved with a normal journal.

3. Have people reading and commenting. It makes a real difference to my motivation to know that people like to read what I have to say. When the comments take on a life of their own and start a good discussion, then I feel really good about things. Because not everyone in my family takes the time to visit website blogs on a regular basis, I send my posts to our immediate family mailing list, and then copy the comments into my blog to keep it all in one place.

4. I'd suggest making a backup of your blog posts somewhere occasionally, so that when technology changes again, all that great journalling energy isn't wasted. For instance, you could copy your posts into a text file each time they fill up a whole page, or print them out and keep a hard copy.

Good luck!