Blogging About Blogging
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The other day I saw some weenie online say that anyone who posts on their blog or website more than once a week doesn’t have anything deep or insightful to say, because there’s no way a person can be deep or insightful on such a rapid schedule.
To that, I say stop projecting your own insecurities on the rest of us.
Fact is, if you want to drive any sizeable amount of traffic to your blog or website when you are a relative unknown, you really should be posting three times a week, if not daily. Once you gain some recognition, sure, go ahead and cut back, write longer-form pieces, knock yourself out. But before then, to build an audience when you’re starting from scratch, you need to produce.
Even if you’ve built an audience, to maintain it, you really still need to produce. Attention spans are short, and if you have a relatively well-trafficked site that suddenly goes dormant, you are going to lose a lot of your former audience. There is so much competing for readers’ attentions that you really need to be on your blogging game if you expect it to amount to anything.
That sounds harsh. Let me elaborate a bit: many people write for the pure exercise of getting their thoughts out onto some sort of tangible medium. Some of this is shared, and the writer derives enjoyment and value from it even though few, if any, people, read their words. That is great. But if you’re out there trying to be a writer, you really need to give readers a reason to keep coming back to your website.
Related to that, you really should respond to all comments, positive and negative. If a reader is going to take the time to not only read what you wrote, but leave a comment, you should return the favor.
Here’s another reason I reject this guy’s advice: writing on a regular schedule makes you a more disciplined writer. This will not only spill over to your other non-blogging writing projects, but the rest of your daily life as well. It is incredibly rewarding to set a goal, stick to it, and accomplish something. Before you know it, you’ll have hundreds of posts written and will have built a body of work. This feels really good.
Remember: just because a guy with tens of thousands of followers online isn’t able to write deep or insightful posts more than once a week, or even less often, doesn’t mean that you’re incapable of doing the same.
Blogging is a different beast than novel-writing or long-form essays or full-blown non-fiction books and treatises. Treat it as such and you will find the practice quite rewarding.
Keep plugging away. Maybe you’ll write a novel or two while you’re at it.
