The One Thing Your Blog Must Do

I see a lot of postings, linked from Twitter and elsewhere, about the Five Things Your Blog Must Do or the Twelve Things Your Blog Must Contain or the Ninety-Eight-Point-Six Things that Every Blog Must Have. The ones I’ve read are not bad advice per se, but I find that every single one of them misses what I consider to be the sine qua non, the raison d’être, the single absolute imperative that simply must be reflected in your blog and in every post you make to it:

It’s Gotta
Make You Happy.

That’s it. That’s the single thing that your blog must do.

It may do other things, too—inform, entertain, infuriate, I don’t care. But, again, whatever other things it might do all point back to the prime directive: It has to please you.

Everything I read on the subject of blogging is geared toward maximizing the number of readers—or, more correctly, hits. It’s all about traffic; it’s all about counting beans, or eyeballs. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that—and let’s not kid ourselves: visits to this little blog of mine typically number in the double digits, every so often in the low triples, and I’ve never made a dime from it, so if a big fan base and/or money is your blogging goal, we may well be talking past each other here. But I have always maintained, in the books and stories I have written as well as my various fledgling online excursions, that, well, it’s all about me. If I like what I’m doing, there’s a better than even chance that someone else will, too.

But if I don’t like what I’m doing—if I’m writing for The Market or The Demographic or The Least Common Denominator—I’m convinced that that always shows through and that the reader will pick up on the cynicism of it, sooner or later (probably sooner), at which point he or she will prove to have exactly the same low level of interest in the undertaking as you have, and move along.

The great John D. MacDonald once said, “My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly.” In my previous house, I had that quotation pinned over my writing desk. I consider it the single most important piece of writing advice I’ve ever encountered.

I would rather be read by a smaller number of people who enjoy what I’m doing (for the most part: they can’t all be gems) because they know that I enjoy it.

But of course that’s just me, and I have never claimed to march to any well-known drum beat.

I recommend you find your own beat and march to that. Some will follow, some not. But I think you’ll find the march more enriching.

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The Truth Hurts!

Whose Blog Is It, Anyway?

While trolling the web recently for some advice on building an RSS feed for my employer (who doesn't yet know I'm exploring the possibility...won't he be surprised!), I came upon a nifty article at Stephen's Web, "Managing Your Blog Entry - 11 Better Tips" by Stephen Downes. I was immediately attracted to Downes's independent thought on the subject of blogging, being myself fully aware of the fact that, according to more than one article I've read, mine is not a "real" blog. You know the sort of article I mean--the kind that tell you what your e-mail "should" or "should not" be (it "should" be brief, it "should not" be detailed, etc.), what a "proper" web page "should" be...and of course what a "real" blog "should" do or be.

My thought always has been, "This is my blog. It "should" be whatever I want it to be. Ditto for my e-mail, my web sites, and, yes, my RSS feed. Sure, these things must follow certain protocols--my web site had damn well better be written in HTML or a successor thereto, or it plain won't work!--but for the rest of it, well, who says it should be thus or so...and who asked him in the first place?

Downes, I think, would not disagree (read him for yourself and make your own judgment), but he expresses himself far less pugnaciously than I just did. His springboard is a list of "shoulds" created by a journalist named Vincent Maher, whose list Downes carefully deconstructs. For instance:

Maher:

• A blog entry is a stub for conversation
  One of the key ways to create a loyal audience for your blog is to create a community of readers who interact with each-other on your blog. This means that your blog entries should be structured in such a way that they start conversations. This means they need to be short and punchy, with a clearly defined point or set of points.

Downes:

• No it isn't. The point of a blog isn't to gather a loyal cadre of readers around you dutifully writing comments. And you certainly should not be writing your blog simply to entice the commenters. And if your readers aren't capable of reading anything other than short and punchy, are you sure you should be writing to them? Think this through. A blog entry isn't some place you create to prompt conversation. A blog is a place where you say something. As for the commenters, they should be writing on their own blogs, where people can actually link to them.

Maher:

• Be active in your own conversations
  Don't sit and watch the comments streaming in and do nothing, get in there! Unlike traditional journalists, the blogger's role is to steer and be part of the conversations they start.

Downes:

• The blogger's role is to blog. If it feels to you that this includes responding to comments, do that. If you'd rather make sure your responses are highlighted and indexed, respond in a new blog post. But don't let anyone convince you that you have to be some kind of chatterbug to be a good blogger. Respond if you have something to say and be a good listener otherwise.

And so on. A nice, thoughtful, and entertaining essay. Give it a read.

Also, Downes did provide me some pretty helpful RSS advice, too, in his excellently named article "How to Create an RSS Feed With Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer." It worked, even without a beer, of which my employer would not have approved. During business hours, at least.