5 Ways To Make Us Care About Your Navel Lint

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5 Ways To Make Us Care About Your Navel Lint

5 Ways To Make Us Care About Your Navel Lint

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I’ve noticed a somewhat disturbing trend in blogs lately.

People are pissing me off.

Not because I don’t agree with what people are saying – okay, sometimes I don’t; Freedom of Speech and all that – but because it’s all about them, all the time.

Which is fine – if you want to tell us everything you ate for dinner or how your hair looks in pigtails, knock yourself out – if you’re a foodie or a hair stylist. But you must realize that we come to your blog expecting your words to actually mean something; amuse and/or entertain us, raise issues that make us feel guilty for leading our petty lives in branded vain, or show us the latest vanity product we can’t live without.

Oops, sidetracked.

In other words, we don’t give a flying f**k about your pigtails.

This Bart Simpson Syndrome (Look at me! It’s all about me! Me, me, me!) is a sad by-product of blogging. Not all bloggers are writers – fine, whatever. I don’t personally care if you’re an illiterate spaceship salesperson from Mars, just be interesting.

I am not pointing or naming names here; I simply want you to look at your navel lint and decide if we will care. At All.

So, what can we do as bloggers to prevent readers from feeling like they’re wasting their time?

Ask your followers what they want. Shocking, I know. But guess what? People tell me all the time what their needs are, ask for information they can’t find or don’t understand, or tell me they’re ready for more Mancode or serious posts. Great! Terrific! I’m in touch with my peeps and they’re in touch with me because I ask them stuff.

Invite guests to write for you. All of us are interesting, special, yada yada. But it’s good to share different perspectives, and have others share their experiences. What’s in my head and seems interesting to me may be the post that puts you to sleep. Tap the potential of colleagues, people you admire, even people you’d never ask normally. Step out of your box!

Be your keywords; become your keywords. If you always blog about the same single topic, we’re gone. If you’re random, same thing. What’s the middle ground? Knowing your brand. Everybody has one, even if you reject it (which is stupid, but whatever). Ever watch Shark Tank? Great show. Allllll about branding (okay, and making deals for lots of money. Small detail.). Figure out six or so things that have something to do with your something.

For example, my keywords are men, women, relationships, blogging, writing, social media, and snark. Backups include vodka, coffee, and Nutella. It’s not that I can’t talk about other stuff, but these are the topics than I’m instinctively drawn to anyway.

K.I.S.S. aka Keep it short, stupid. No offense to any of my dear prolific author friends, but if you’ve got a lot (two words, dammit) to say, split it into another post.

500-750 words is plenty for one post. If you’re giving a lesson or demonstrating something, go long (are we talking about football here?), but even then consider Part I and Part 2.)

We know every word you write is gold, but consider breaking it up even further into short sentences, paragraphs, and using bullets (Whoa. I just did that.) Share the wealth.

Comments. I can’t tell you how irritating it is to leave an amazing (okay, down children – you know you feel the same way, shut up) comment on a blog and never get a response! The whole point of blogging is so people will think we’re brilliant, right? Oh wait, that’s just me. Anyway, answer your damn comments, people. I personally don’t care how ‘big and important’ you are – it’s us little people who got you there.

I guess that’s all that’s bothering me this week (not really but I’m at 662 words and don’t want to break my own rules). Tune in next week for more hopefully somewhat more intelligent drivel.