{"id":2809,"date":"2009-06-06T09:06:16","date_gmt":"2009-06-06T17:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=2809"},"modified":"2011-05-20T09:30:57","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T14:30:57","slug":"how-to-guarantee-your-blog-doesnt-suck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2009\/06\/06\/how-to-guarantee-your-blog-doesnt-suck\/","title":{"rendered":"How to guarantee your blog doesn&#8217;t suck"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2009\/06\/05\/adventure-life-author-speaks\/\">defense of the proposition that &#8220;most blogs suck&#8221; <\/a> brought in a comment from a guy named Phil, who asked for tips on reducing site suckage (his <a href=\"http:\/\/wildrye.com\/\">Wild Rye blog<\/a> is not what I would consider sucky, despite his suspicions to the contrary). I never miss a chance to share the fruits of my <del>addiction<\/del> knowledge to a fellow blogger, so here goes: <!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>1) Avoid activities which cause a blog to suck: <\/strong> (I&#8217;m guilty of all these, mind you, but I try to limit obvious pitfalls.)<\/p>\n<div id=\"breakout\">\n<strong>Related links:<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2009\/04\/21\/tips-on-writing-about-hiking\/\">Tips on writing about hiking<\/a> <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2008\/10\/28\/the-case-for-starting-your-own-hiking-blog\/\">The case for starting a hiking blog<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2008\/10\/28\/how-to-start-a-hiking-blog\/\">How to start a hiking blog<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2006\/11\/04\/why-are-we-blogging\/\">Why are we blogging?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Off-topic ranting.<\/strong> Bushwhacking is fine in the outback, but on a blog you need to stay on the trail. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Uninformed blather.<\/strong> Stick to what you know; leave the rest to the suckheap of history.  <\/li>\n<li><strong>Bad grammar, spelling.<\/strong> Readers will thank you for taking an extra 10 minutes to clean up your posts before you post. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Fact errors.<\/strong> Mistakes kill credibility; owning up and begging forgiveness builds it. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Stale, drab, boring, repetitive posts.<\/strong> Be exciting, be interesting, be original; have a life, in other words.  <\/li>\n<li><strong>Ugly advertising.<\/strong> It&#8217;s OK to drum up a little revenue, but give your readers&#8217; eyes a break by folding your ads into your design. Also, be up-front about whether you&#8217;re making any money from folks clicking on your links. <\/li>\n<li>\t<strong>Infrequent updates.<\/strong> Stale posts stink up your homepage.  If you find you don&#8217;t have time to blog, it&#8217;s better to just stop altogether. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>2) Pursue avenues of blog excellence <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Be original:<\/strong> Demonstrate that your perspective is not like anybody else&#8217;s. We all do the same stuff, but we all experience it differently. Dwell on the difference. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Tell people how to do stuff. <\/strong> Provided the Web doesn&#8217;t already have 17 such guides.  <\/li>\n<li><strong>Be newsy.<\/strong> It helps to have some personal knowledge of what the news means, though wise-ass remarks may suffice if such knowledge is lacking. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Provide validation.<\/strong>  Writing about your experience reassures other people doing the same thing that it&#8217;s OK (though blogging about, say, your marijuana plantation or bomb-building hobbies is not advised).\n<li><strong>Link to cool stuff. <\/strong> Seems counter-intuitive, but sending readers away from your blog is one of the best ways to keep them coming back. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Do sort-downs. <\/strong> Find the treasure among the trash, then tell folks about it. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Show you&#8217;re having fun. <\/strong> People will forgive just about anything if you&#8217;re passionate and enthusiastic (within the bounds of decency, of course).<\/li>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are more, I suppose, but you&#8217;d really have to try hard at sucking if you followed all these guidelines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s defense of the proposition that &#8220;most blogs suck&#8221; brought in a comment from a guy named Phil, who asked for tips on reducing site suckage (his Wild Rye blog is not what I would consider sucky, despite his suspicions&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2009\/06\/06\/how-to-guarantee-your-blog-doesnt-suck\/\">Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2809"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5734,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809\/revisions\/5734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}