Any bloggers here?

Former Member

Hiya, I'm thinking of starting my own blog but not sure where to start other than using WordPress. Are any of the site regulars bloggers? What makes a good blog post vs a bad blog post? How do you actually get people interested / following you? Cool :-) thanks!

Former Member

The blogs I find most interesting are almost exclusively focused on a particular topic: politics; programming; motorcycle maintenance etc. I (and I'd imagine most people) have little interest in reading someone's online diary or an extended twitter/Facebook post; people tend to grossly overvalue how interesting they are.

Former Member

We link to this on blogging from the (currently very small) 'Net and Tech' section of TheSite.

I found using Google blogger is a good way to get started easily - quite a lot of people I know started on blogger and then moved to Wordpress when they were more established

Former Member

CptCoatHanger wrote: »

The blogs I find most interesting are almost exclusively focused on a particular topic: politics; programming; motorcycle maintenance etc. I (and I'd imagine most people) have little interest in reading someone's online diary or an extended twitter/Facebook post; people tend to grossly overvalue how interesting they are.

Thanks, it would have a specific topics / thread. It wouldn't simply be 'dear diary'.

Former Member

I used to write for a shared blog with a friend. It worked out quite well because we had a lot of different friends on facebook and so made a group specifically for the blog and sent out links to each new blog post weekly. We also used twitter to link to blog entries.

Also doing what you're doing now; that is trying to reach out to other bloggers is a good way to start because many people put up links to friends blogs on their pages if they like yours.

Mr Geeee is a frequent bloggerererer. I'm sure he has a few tips

Former Member

I've seen how people on twitter with 20k followers think they are the bees knees, when to each of those followers they are still one amongst many. I mention this because I tend to publish my links using facebook and twitter. Twitter is where I get most views from. Not friends on there but "acquaintances" do pass comment and/or enjoy what I post sometimes. Mine isn't a diary or a life story, and nor does it follow any specific genre of things. If It did then I think I would be able to get more attention to it, not neccesarily saying loads, just more. However of the people I know who regularly have a look at it, they are a very wide ranging bunch. I've done things taking the piss out of politicians, about how there seemed to be a lot of pimp my ride'ness going on in Libya, to how I think F1 would be really awesome if it was more like mario kart. My place is in my signature.

The main thing is to not blog just to get attention, in essence do what you want to and when you want. Do put some pictures in and try to make it interesting, but even if you get very few views of things dont give up. You need to make sure you are in the mindset to be doing it for yourself and for a bit of fun. I often get anywhere between 100-200 pageviews a day. Sometimes its quite a high number of viewers, but even when it isn't, it shows that a small number of viewers are coming back and looking at other pages. Also once you have done a few posts or built up a little bit of a repertoire then people will often look at one thing and be tempted to have a look at another etc. I'd say mine is best described as random and both has and hasnt worked. It isnt a world famous place attracting mega superstars, but equally its going quite well (since August 2011) and I'm more than happy with the 33k pageviews since I started (bearing in mind I didnt blog anything for 6 months when I was in the desert too). I also tell the place not to count my pageviews, so its not just me refreshing the page. For reference I use blogger.com and direct a custom domain to point to google servers, and there is an option within settings to say you want to use your own custom domain. I suspect you will be able to do the same in wordpress but I dont know.

Former Member

I've got two blogs, ones more of a positive one, and the other is mental health things, and my own experiences - I use wordpress, and I have a couple of followers on my positive blog, and always get feedback with how good it is etc. I don't think anything really makes a bad blog, as it's your own space in a way. I guess if you're looking to entice your readers, there's ways of sharing and following other people - also I think adding tags could help as well.. part from that I don't think there's the good vs bad blog thinggy xx

Former Member

I think that there is a lot of advice people can take on board. Although there is use in sorting out simple mistakes like spelling etc, changing your whole writing style to try and get a wider audience is something I wouldn't recommend. Its like going on a date and being successful because you pretended to be something you're not etc.

Former Member

I am quite into the things I want to blog about obviously, but I suppose what I'm looking at is contrary almost to what you've put. I don't want to go to effort if its just going to be a dozen viewers and all that, I want to write in a style that's engaging, informative, interesting but not bogging people down either. To use your analogy - whilst it's not good to pretend you're someone you're not on a date, it is good practice to have a shower before and make sure you dress to impress and have a few conversation points in your head to talk about if it goes stale.

Will definitely check out both your blogs though just got to nip out now - but I am appreciating the advice! And yes I have webspace it will be [domain].com/blog installing wordpress is childsplay pretty much!

Former Member

Accipiter wrote: »

Sorry, to intrude upon your post, ShyBoy, but whilst there is a thread about blogging, up here, I wanted to ask people a question.

Would anybody here be interested in a blog about falconry? I was considering starting one about my hawk and the work I do with birds of prey.

I know it is probably not the sort of thing you would look at, but I was wondering if you might have any interest. I don't want to set up a blog if no one is interested.

Cheers

I'd definitely take a look I have no experience of falconry so if you avoided using technical terms and jargon then I'd be interested. But I suppose it's quite a specialised subject so maybe you'd want to aim it at other falconry folk?

Former Member

I'd certainly be quite interested in reading about something I don't know, like falconry. I always view it as even if only one person read one thing on my blog and nothing more, then I would be happy. I think its good to have a creative outlet no matter what it is, and remember that you might find things run of the mill, its a whole new world (of falconry) to me and others.

Former Member

Accipiter wrote: »

Thanks for the positive responses. I have now created a blog - http://buteoninae.blogspot.co.uk/

I'll have to put the link in my signature. I promise not all the posts will be that tedious!

Bookmarked I thought it was a good intro post.

Former Member

I liked the first post too accipter :-) I've read blogs into specific niche interests are the best ones anyway because you have specific knowledge / value that other people don't already have.

I should get mine started at some point :-D

Former Member

Great first post, Accipter! Enjoyed reading it

Former Member

I've been considering starting one for a while - so decided to take the plunge. Got a feeling it will revolve around beauty products and makeup for us fair skinned gals, as well as animal-y type stuff in general.

http://rachgoesrawr.wordpress.com/

And I'm going to bookmark you Accipter!