A lot of people who write blogs dispensing advice advocate picking a side on a topic in order to provoke reaction and discussion. And to that end I agree. the whole idea of a blog is to present your ideas and reactions to the world, and if you water down your opinion in the hopes of gaining more readers and not offending anyone, you’ll end up with no one following you. In addition to this, you have to be true to yourself. You can just as easily try to offer an opinion on an issue opposite from what you truly believe. Don’t do that. Be who you are and don’t apologize for it if you happen to have an opinion on something. Now, with that being said, here’s my disclaimer. This attitude can be used by people to discuss, passionately yet calmly, topics like politics, religion or others. If you blog and promote hate of minority groups or religious groups, you are not helping anyone with your blog.

When you first go to blog, establish your credibility with your chosen subject. After a while, it helps to break the monotony of daily posts on one subject if you vary it up a little bit. for instance, I desginate my Friday posts for lighthearted, comical posts that usually have nothing to do with blogging. If you’ve seen some of those posts, you know what I’m talking about. You may not enjoy the humor but it provides a nice relief for all of us. you can do the same thing. If your focus is on physics, take one posts and write about someone got their lab coat zipper stuck. Have fun. Spread some humor.

Unless you’re a professional writer, you initial forays into the blogosphere are going to be sub-par. Guess what? It’s ok. Even a baby stumbles and falls while learning to walk. Be bold and take the first few steps, but know that those first few steps are going to be a little wobbly. When you first start out, your skills are raw and unrefined, much like a baby’s sense of balance and coordination. Given time and effort, blogging becomes easier just as the baby is able to take that first step, then the second step. If you are new, realize you are a newborn stretching new muscles that will ultimately help you navigate and interact with this wonderful world around us.

If you want to start a blog, or if you are visiting for the first time, getting a good blog started requires a little time, effort, and willingness to be open. Spend a little time developing your blog’s overall theme. What do you plan to write about. It’s better to focus on a narrower topic than to just write about whatever thoughts you have. And in deciding your blog’s main topic, you will need to spend some time developing a writing style appropriate for that subject. Since online interaction is the preferred method of communication, you’ll need to invite readers by allowing them to comment on your blog. Watch for spammers, but overall developing a blog is a process.

Thanks to MK Akan for this idea. Everything in life can be boiled into one of two things, an event or a process. An event is a periodic occurrence lasting a short time. A process is a long term endeavor that encompasses many days, weeks, even years. When you blog, if you want to be successful, you need to treat it like a process. If you’ve never blogged before, you need to educate yourself, but the education doesn’t just happen at the beginning. The education takes place every time you post. You learn something, even a little something, every time you post. The best bloggers are the most educated, and while some people can teach themselves and retain quicker, the process is still the same. Treat your blog like a crock pot, adding the ingredients of daily content with your experience as well as advice and experience from others. Given time, you will have the results you desire.

Jill Smokler presented a pretty concise list of the things to avoid adding to your blog if you want to attract a following of readers. Tops on her list was automatic music. I have never gone to a blog that played music automatically once I was on the site. I’ve been to regualr websites that did that, but not a blog. I agree that this is a sure way to turn people away. Even if it’s a music blog, forcing people to listen to music they may not enjoy just to see if you have something written will not keep people there for long.

Your blog is your voice to the outside world. And if you want people to interact with you blog, you have to display some personality in your posts.  Now, the extremes of this scenarios are when you have all personality and no meaningful content.  You are the equivalent of Paris Hilton, fun to look at and converse with for a minute or two, but you then realize that there is nothing of substance to what she is saying.  The other end is great content; smart, insightful but with no personality. Congratulations, you are Ben Stein calling out “Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?” So you have to find the right balance between your mind and your personality.  The problem? You have to find the balance that works for you.  No one can really tell you how much personality you need or how much more content you need to inject.  It’s a certain amount of trial and error.

This blogger named ‘Evan‘ decided to blog about his grocery spending habits.  He posted each day talking about the challenges of spending only $1 per day on food for a month.  It got me to thinking that blogging through a book or blogging something like this, not necessarily for a publicity stunt, can be a wealth of blogging posts as well as stimulate conversation among your readers.  It’s got me thinking about something I can do for this blog.

Do these two things go together?

This is Fox’s headline for a healthcare story. I mean, no matter which side of the healthcare debate you fall on, as a news organization, if you promote yourself as being fair and balanced, you can’t use headlines like these. This implies that the other side is wrong. If you set yourself up as being balanced and fair, you can’t take a side, by definition, you have to remain neutral. When it comes to your blog, don’t say you believe one thing then go back on that.

MSNBC has a story today warning job seekers of the 5 most common ways to ruin a resume.  It got me to thinking about how we a bloggers can potentially do the same harm to our blog and credibility. So, in my opinion, are the 5 ways to ruin your blogging credentials.

1. Post without researching – nothing pegs you as an idiot faster than false statements that could have been checked quickly.
2. Speak in condescending tones – I’ve read a few blogs where the person was very knowledgeable in their chosen subject matter, but they spoke in a way that they thought they were a god.
3. Lack of focus – you don’t need a blog that only discusses one topic.  This blog, for example, is a mixture of topics even though the overall theme is blogging itself. While it’s important to have fun, if you don’t focus your attention in a general direction, your the cyber equivalent of a kid with ADD.
4. Commenting on other posts with questionable language – some people will debate this as a First Amendment issue, but the internet is such a large community, and since we are looking to have intelligent discussions, let’s clean up the language and leave the juvenile name calling out of it. I don’t care what kind of language you use with your friends, if you plan to leave comment somewhere, you can get your point across without that area of language.
5. Bad grammar – If someone does not take the time to construct their ideas in a way that is coherent, logical and spelled correctly, you don’t project yourself as someone who puts much care or time into your toughts.