How to be a successful blogger | Guest Authored.

01Oct08

There are a lot of blogs out there. That’s the understatement of the century. Yet, most of these blogs go undiscovered, unacknowledged. They are, in essence, shunned for not being one of the ‘cool kids’ of the blogoschmear.

Let’s take a look at some of the cardinal sins of these bloggers:

1.       Laughing at their own jokes; (and closely related is next on the list)

2.       Making jokes;

3.       Not taking themselves seriously;

4.       Not presenting their true identity online – not making their name into a brandname

5.       Writing about their mom/hairdresser/wax appointment and they talk about their pets/kids/boyfriends/girlfriends/drinking/partying/bowel movements or lack thereof;

6.       They actually comment on nearly every blog they read;

7.       Blog rolls actually mean something to them;

8.       They use twitter/face book/ insert other social networking platform here to keep in contact with their friends, and to swap gossip and recipes instead of promoting themselves and their boring-ass brandname.

Because everyone knows, that in order to be a successful blogger you must:

a) use your real name at all times. Your name is not merely something your parents burdened you with, but a handy marketing tool that you imagine emblazoned upon caps, t-shirts, pens and in neon lights above the city;

b) never make jokes, never laugh at your own jokes, and most importantly, you must take yourself and others dead seriously at all fucking times man. Oh wait. And you should never swear. Unless it is an absolute emergency. Like someone made a joke, and you were the butt of it.

c) you must never write about your mom/hairdresser/wax appointment. Furthermore you should never write about bowel movements, eating or anything related to being a person. Your readers should never picture you as ‘human’. You should appear, in their minds, like demi-god blogging beings. They should never think of you taking a crap, and really straining to push that bad boy out. (Someone should have eaten Activia Regular yoghurt, neh?)

d) Never ever turn twitter into a chatroom, or send people ridiculous ‘what kind of vampire are you?’ quiz on facebook. Furthermore, you should never tweet when drunk, nor update more than once every half hour. You should not follow people just because they follow you. In fact, you should weed out your ‘followers’ list at least once a week, because only a handful of ‘chosen’ actually, in your opinion, are worthy of having your updates in their timeline. You weed people out of your followers list, and then feel compelled to blog about it. Frankly, I don’t give a damn, my dear. To you, Facebook and or twitter is used merely to inform people that you have updated your blog. And to share ideas and network with ‘like-minded intellectually-compatible individuals’. You don’t picture twitter as a network. You picture it as a pyramid, with you on top, and all your followers groveling in adoration at your feet.

e) You shouldn’t know what a blog roll is or how to use it. You should never link to anyone else on your blog. Why would you want to give people a means to exit your blog? You MUST trap them forever, and guilt-trip them into not clicking the ‘close’ button on their browser.

f) never comment on a blog that isn’t your own. commenting is your way of responding to others’ comments on your blog when they disagree with you. Dont comment on other peoples’ blogs, because then it might look like you accept their viewpoint, condone their blog, or are affirming their status as bloggers worth reading.

g) If you think that there’s nothing to blog about if you omit strenuous bowel movements/back, sack and crack waxes and rude ‘your mother’ jokes. Think again. There’s all sorts of fascinating shit to write about.

Let’s have a look at what the so-called ‘big boys and girls’ have been writing about in the past week:

1.   Kgalema Motlanthe’s first national address (fuck, excuse me while I choke on my own vomit)

2. The iPhone (I want a phone that can make calls and send text messages. Is that too much to ask? I don’t want a phone that picks my nose for me while I play Sudoku on it)

3. The many forms of web marketing for 2008 (um. Remind me again who gives a flying fanny fuck about this?) Please also note that this list can be translated into 7 different languages. That’s 7 other languages for me to not give a crap in.

4. Electric cars (c’mon. I’d rather drive a wheelbarrow than something as unsexy as an electric car)

5. Microsoft adopting opensource jQuery (Add this to my ‘don’t give a tosswinkie list)

6. Google’s 10th birthday. (Unless there’s free cake with a stripper who’s not adverse to giving me a blowjob under the table, I’m going to pass on this conversation, please)

7. SEO compatibility. (I think they made a spelling mistake there. The thing you should be worried about is SEX compatibility. SEO? No thanks. If it cant get me laid, I don’t care)

8. Whether Harabi will be the next WordPress. (I didn’t know words were pressable. The only thing I care about is making chicks press their thighs together, and then open. So the person who blogged about this – I have one question for you. Dude, do you EVER GET LAID?)

9. Firefox plugins that allow you to save now, read later (dude, the only plugin you should ever been concerned about is the one between your legs. Worry about finding a place to insert that. Once sorted, blog about it. I’d find that so much more interesting.)

Okay, I’m starting to even bore myself, talking about what the high and mighty are wearing out their keyboards typing about. Let’s face it. Those who have actually used the phrase ‘Web 2.0′ as anything other than an insult, or actually have it on their CVs, you should be ashamed of yourself.

So. All you future google whores might want to pay attention to what I’m about to say:

Don’t focus on having a great blog, focus on having a blog that’s great for your readers.

And stop being so god dammed boring, okay?

Filed under: Stirred   |  4 Comments
Tags: kick in the guts, taking names