Apparently, I’m Blogging All Wrong!

This week, let’s look at blogs. What make one tick and another flop? Why do some get clicks and others languish patiently? And which is this?

The IB syllabus for my English language acquisition students asks them to practice writing a variety of text types, from letters to proposals, from persuasive speeches to brochures. This month, we’re investigating blogs. The best way to learn it is to teach, they say, and twenty-two months a blogger now, I find myself learning loads.

What a blog should be

A blog post in its most distilled form is an electronic text that invites interaction between the author and reader. Some blogging experts are quite open–“To be a successful blogger,” says Scott Chow at The Blog Starter, “there is really just one requirement: a passion for your topic.” Others, like Liz Careathers at Smart Blogger, emphasize some of the pitfalls that separate the successful blogger from the bounce.

In my class, students read and presented various sections of Careathers’s guide to blog post writing, and the more I listened to my own students explaining to me everything a blog post needs to be (or at least needs to be in order to amass wide readership) the more I felt a building cringe.

Focus on the reader’s needs

A central tenet of Careathers’s guide is the ultimate focus of blog posts on reader needs. Beginning with the headline that should anticipate a specific need the reader has, then an introduction that builds empathy, Careathers maps a trajectory for the blog post that seems in some ways to efface the blogger.

I get it: why would you, dear readers, care about me? Save my amazing parents (the most steadfast readership of all!), I understand that you are here not for me but for yourselves. For something that this post might give you–advice or (I muse) perhaps some calm and cozy feeling, maybe even some pretty pictures of Norwegian fjords?

And would I not do well to cater more to you, wax less often about myself as I seem so wont to do! Ah. Perhaps. The blogger, Careathers says, is “supposed to be reading their [the readers’] minds, not the other way around.”

Keep paragraphs short

Like news reports that limit paragraphs to one or two sentences, blog posts seem to love the bite-size nugget.

I’m trying it! I’m breaking things up!

Even more–

how

about

paragraphs

like

t

h

i

s

?

Maybe the above will make up for some of the monster text-blocks I know I’ve written here on Words Like Trees.

The short paragraph, I understand, keeps a reader moving quickly. It does not intimidate like the wall of solid text. Even if the pace is something of an illusion–Scott Chow emphasizes the value of a long post, provided it is broken up into digestible chunks–the shorter paragraphing makes readers feel that they are making progress through the piece and not skip a large paragraph, getting nothing from it.

Did you skip that last paragraph?

Consistency

What is Words Like Trees? It’s loosely posts on writing. It’s sometimes posts on school. It’s occasionally personal musings with some attempt at metaphor. It’s something different every week. I recognize I’m breaking here a cardinal rule, that readers who subscribed after a post on use of metaphor will be nonplussed to see the next post on some guy in Norway’s personal heroes. My mom famously loves it when I write about my life. “When it’s one of those author toolbox ones?” she says, “I skim!”

In truth, I still don’t know what this blog’s about! I love connecting with other writers, but if I’m trying to build a writer platform, shouldn’t I also be connecting with potential readers? Blogging advice often talks about a “brand” or what we’re “marketing.” I have no idea what I’m marketing. I just hope someone finds meaningful what I have to say.

If I were a student in my own class, I’d tell me, “Jimmy, you’ve got to clarify your goals.” I could do with taking my own advice.

What are our goals?

Maybe I’m too old a dog for these tricks. Maybe I resist too much the advice of others on my writing, because I’m convinced I have a style I should listen to instead. I’m too convinced I know what’s best, and in the end, that’s hubris.

So why do we blog, after all? Is it a journal for our thoughts alone? Is it a vehicle for connection with others? Is it some kind of instant publishing experience, a way to start that process, to let this voice out there?

I started this blog two years ago December as a way to connect, to share my voice, to put myself as a writer out there concretely. I love the connections I have established, the discussions I have had in comments, and the learning that has happened with each post.

But I can see that ultimately, I’m writing more essays than I am blog posts, and I imagine that this limits my reach.

I’m not ready to give it up. If I have a brand, it’s just myself. If people think I’m worth reading, well, so much the better. Or maybe this is another excuse.

Last thoughts

I don’t think I’m doing everything wrong. But I have plenty more to learn here too. We’ll see how my posts evolve in the coming months. Thank you for being here with me, either way.

Best wishes for the coming week,
Jimmy