6 June 06

Stop talking about yourself

Please. It’s really boring.

The one thing I hate about a lot of blogs is when they begin to just talk about themselves. I admit that I have been guilty of doing it myself on occasion, and I’m sure every blog author has. I’ll happily let people off for one or two lapses, but please stop it.

This isn’t directed at anyone in particular before someone thinks I’ve been reading their blog. It’s not an individual attack. Honest. Scout’s honour.

The reason I’m bringing this up is recently I’ve been on a mini-quest to discover new blogs. Checkin’ the blogosphere if you will. I’ve been clicking through to people’s websites when they post comments to other blogs. I gathered the people who read and comment on the same posts would be as incredibly witty and interesting as me. But they’re not! Peasants! Me reading about, say, your work being boring doesn’t make me want to subscribe to your blog. Your life is boring. My life is boring. No one wants to read that I cleaned my flat this weekend, for example, unless it’s really important. (Cleaning my flat is important, but I don’t expect you to read it. Unless you want to? No?). Anyone’s life is boring to everyone else (unless you’re very interesting, like me).

So here’s a mini-guide to what I actually want to read about:

Your opinion
It’s important to know if the person I’m reading about has a brain or not. Plus I like to get stimulated. No, not like that. In the head. No, not like that. Let me know what you think about things. I don’t even mind if we disagree (it usually means that I’m right and you’re wrong though).

New things
That’s actually the best heading I could think of for this. Again, stimulate me with new things. I like news. News is good. New things rock. Dude. Yeah.

Links
I do like links, but please don’t underdo links. Don’t write a sentence, give me a paragraph detailing what the link(s) are about. I’m much more likely to click on them. So less “LOL! Look at this! It’s minging! OMG!” please. Thank you.

Frequent Posting
It’s also nice to know that the blog author is still thinking about his/her readers, and that they’re willing to spend some time writing (or blogging – a lower form of writing) for them. The frequency is entirely up to you, but don’t overdo it – I tend to get bored of five posts a day like with sites like Lifehacker.

Entertainment
Web development is one of the driest subjects around. At least science blogs can talk about babies with three arms. And web developers can tend to lean towards the geeky side of the spectrum, meaning that they don’t always have the best sense of humour. Dry subject + bad humour = rikrikrik dull blog. Please keep it at least a bit light, and at least try and entertain me. Make me feel welcome. Remember I’m the visitor, I don’t have to be there.

Relevance
This kind of takes on the point at the start of this post really. Make sure your posts are not self-referencial, and make them as relevant to your readers as physically possible. Basically, write things that I can read and then steal the ideas and make myself look clever in front of people. In fact, everything I have ever said has been stole from a blog somewhere on the planet.

Re-read your posts
The most annoying thing ever is – no, not people from Liverpool – bloggers who don’t re-read their posts before posting them. Please check that your posts make sense, are in some kind of order, and that your spelling and grammar is generally okay. Otherwise it will make you look stupid and amateurish – you don’t want your blog to be as bad as mine, do you?

I don’t pretend to be an expert blogger. You can probably tell that. I’m a rubbish blogger actually. But I do read a lot of posts, and this is what I, and a lot of people, like. I personally try and keep to these guidelines as much as possible, and will do in future. Slap me if I don’t. And I’ll slap you if you don’t follow them too.

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