Without further ado, I’ll just pick up where I left off. If you’re thoroughly confused about “where I left off”, please see my previous post from yesterday-slash-last month.
Don’t write anything that you wouldn’t want your parents to read. Yes, that includes writing a Top 10 list entitled “Reasons Why I Am Certain My Biological Mother Is Still Out There” or “I Had Multiple Orgasms Last Night and Here’s How You Can, Too”. This is another thing that successful bloggers pay no heed to. But I just can’t do it. Besides, I pay my therapist for a reason.
Pick a niche… I don’t claim to be an expert in papier maiche, Morse code or zipper repair – so I simply don’t write about those topics. Parenting, on the other hand… I’m like a how-to book for Dummies. My kids are the smartest, most congenial and mannerly children to ever get pushed out of my body, so obviously I’m going to spread the knowledge.
…and stick to it. Don’t go all AWOL if your blog is supposed to be about family matters and write about random things just to put out a post. I am a great example of what NOT to do. Sometimes I give parenting advice, sometimes I voice my disdain about why I was allowed to procreate in the first place. Then I ask questions such as, “What do I do with my children when they’re not sleeping?” then turn around and write a product review about cool baby gadgets. Sometimes, I’ll write a scathing article about child kidnappings, then get serious and put a curse on the person who made me spill my iced coffee. Seconds later, I’ll turn around and interview a leprechaun politician. It’s all very confusing.
Also, plain-old family blogs number in the hundreds of thousands, so it’s good to have some kind of offbeat focus in addition if you can. I don’t have one, but here are a few suggestions for you that just may work:
- Polygamous marital strife
- Tightrope walking
- Easy magic tricks that will even baffle your Uncle Peter
Use social networking to your advantage. Facebook and Twitter are great ways to connect to a wide audience quickly. For example, I set up a Fan Page on Facebook so that whenever I post, it shows up in interested fans’ News Feeds. When someone “Likes” my page, it shows up for all of their friends to see. You can increase your readership exponentially… unless you’re me. (But if you’re one of my readers, I love you. I really do. There’s just no good reason why I deserve you, so thank you for giving me the time of day.) You can also install the Twitter widget to link directly to your blog or social networking site.
Alas, if you’re pressed for time but want to get famous ASAP, you can always use the following fallback: write an inflammatory tweet about a person/brand/world event such as “#BarackObama doesn’t care about black people”, “I found a brick of cow dung in my #KraftMacaroni and Cheese” or “I’m having a sleepover with #MGhadafi tonight – text me for location” and that should do the trick. People troll the internet waiting to pounce on such tweets and you’ll be invited to red carpet events in no time.
If you are afraid to start because you’re not the most computer literate, get a book or two on blogging basics before diving in. When I used the word “widget” above, did you think I was being rude to Little People or did you nod in understanding? I have quite a few books that got me from writing on scrap paper to publishing this junk that you’re reading right now, but I still have MUCH work to do. Books will introduce you to the world of hosting, domains, themes, categories, pages, tags, plugins, blah blah and blah. I don’t remember anything about these or I would tell you.
Tune in next time for some real advice that may actually be useful to you.
