Blogs and Blogging for a first timer.

Hi

I have been in IT for 18 years now and believe it or not I have never blogged or read a blog before - well regularly that is - I’m sure I have read the occasional one in the past without realising it.

However a friend recently advised me to start a blog. Mainly as I am opinionated about food (as well as other stuff) and said that the amount of different types of food I eat and my enjoyment of take always and restaurants I may have something to say.

Well I took his advice and started one but in the short time I have been doing it – just less than a week – that’s how new it is. I have already deviated from food.

My first blog was about me and my interests and what I would like and I have posted 1 on Driving, 1 on Dr Who and 4 on Food (one is a family night and another is a day out with 2 meals included)

My Question is this. Should a blog be specific i.e. about food only or about anything that I feel about blogging / ranting about.

Thanks for your advice – and I can take either a slagging or constructive criticism (3 sisters and 3 daughters so criticism is second nature to me now)

Check out the blog if you dare.

Blogs have three main purposes. Either they’re official and focused like a news or fan site, or they’re personal and focused like a hobby site, or they’re personal and occasional like a diary.

Mine is personal and occasional, and like most blogs is barely updated at all anymore. But if you want a real following to come of it, which most people never get, then focusing it helps a lot.

But write whatever you want to write about, and over time it should become clear what you prefer and where it will naturally lead.

That’s really important. Just write. If you’ve got your blog set up with a view counter, you may see that your posts about a certain topic are the ones that get more attention, and at that point you can decide whether to specialize or branch off a second blog on that topic.

As far as criticism goes, I find your blog difficult to read. Part of it, I’m sure, is because we’re from different parts of the world and have different ways of expressing things, but your writing is very choppy. You use dashes – all over the place – and it’s hard to follow your train of thought – as I’m reading. There’s also a noticeable lack of punctuation. This part, for example:

It hurts my brain a little.

But it’s a good start and I’m not telling you to stop writing. If you enjoy it, do it. The more you write, and the more you read (that’s important too!), the better you’ll get at expressing yourself. Find some blogs you enjoy (many Dopers are prolific bloggers) and get a feel for different people’s writing styles. Let yours evolve as you go until you find your voice.

I’m not claiming my own blog is exactly stellar, mind you. Mine is more personal ramblings than anything else, but I’m happy with it like that for now. It’s an outlet for my writing and a way for my family to keep up with my life, which is all I need it to be.

Just reading that small part of my blog makes your point. I think I just write as I speak, quick and without thought. I will need to review my posts a bit more prior to posting them.

Thanks for the pointers / constructive help. Really appreciated

People love pictures in blogs, especially food blogs. You gotta have pictures of your food. That’s how stuff gets pinned on Pinterest and shared on Facebook.

You don’t have to be in any of your pictures. I have tons of pictures on my sports blog and I’m not in any of them. You don’t have to have pictures in every post but they would help the food posts tremendously.

Thanks. I never thought of that. I will need to check my blog page to see if it allows pictures.

I find it helps to think of the amount of effort a writer and a reader has to put into communication as a zero-sum game.

It’s quicker and easier for the writer to produce stream-of-consciousnes copy, with dashes standing in for every other punctuation mark, frequent mis-spellings, uncorrected typos and rambling or inconsistent syntax. It’s still possible for a reader to figure out what you’re trying to say from copy like that, but it will require a lot more work on his part to do so.

If your thoughts are really so stunning and original that readers find this extra effort worthwhile, fine. But the risk you run is that many will lose patience after a paragraph or two, and turn instead to someone no more incisive than you, but who takes the trouble to present his copy in a more digestible form.

It’s also just plain bad manners to throw copy at potential readers in a half-finished state. If someone chucked a meal down in front of you, with food spilt all over the edge of the plate and a thumb-print in the gravy, you’d feel pretty insulted, I think. Consider how your readers might feel if you treat them in a similar way.

[mod]Just changed “timmer” to “timer” for you in the thread title.[/mod]

[professional writer-editor, occasional blogger]That’s the kind of stuff you should definitely fix before posting. If there’s a misspelling in the post title, I have zero expectation that the post itself will be worth reading – so I don’t. [/pw-e,ob]

Thanks. I will need to be careful in future. I know I’m a bit lazy when it comes to checking my posts - spent too long just typing and sending without checking. I will have to slow down.