It’s your thing, do what you wanna do

I started writing this as a comment on Matt’s dos and don’ts for webloggers, but I think this is a better place for it.

The rules Matt writes about apparently (lol) work for his blog and personality and reading habits. However, as regarded long-time blogger Rebecca Blood writes in her essay on the history of weblogs, The original weblogs were link-driven sites. Each was a […] particular mixture of links, commentary, and personal observation unique to each individual site [which] has always given each weblog its distinctive voice and personality.

My particular mixture is my own, but it’s influenced by what, and how, I read. On my blogroll are a lot of blogs that are little more than the occasional essay interspersed into an extended link dump, many others that are comprised of short commentaries on a link or two, and a few that are basically personal journals. And when I do one of my occasional prunings, those are among the first to go. The ones that I keep are made up of a mixture of different topics, lengths and styles. I have no idea or care about the frequency at which the writers post, because I’m subscribed to a large enough number of them that there’s always something new and interesting for me to read.

I joke from time to time about my “audience of none”, but it’s because that’s all I expect. Just because I write something doesn’t mean people are forced to read it, whether it’s at work—where I’d been blogging, unregarded and mostly unnoticed, for four and a half years before others started last month—or on my own site. If people find some value (whatever that may be) in what I write, when I write it, they’ll read it and maybe even come back; if they don’t, they won’t.

So here’s my own personal list of blogging dos and don’ts:

  • Do blog when you feel like it. Don’t write because someone expects you to.
  • Do write about what you want to, the way you want to. Don’t squelch your own style.
  • Don’t expect an audience. Do appreciate an audience if, and while, you have one.
  • Do come up with your own rules. Or don’t; it’s your blog, you can do with it as you please.

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4 thoughts on “It’s your thing, do what you wanna do

  1. I really like your rules… and that’s exactly why I haven’t increased the frequency of my posts despite Matt’s constant badgering.

    My blog was supposed to be a collection of links and if it wasn’t for that, I probably wouldn’t have started blogging. When I haven’t been doing a lot of reading, I don’t have a lot to blog about.

  2. I think the occasional link post is ok. It’s just a way of informing your readers of articles, videos, etc. that you found interesting. Anyways I agree with your rules much more than Matt’s 😉

  3. And yet both Tammy and PeterJ have posted comments like “at least you GET comments” or “you get HOW MANY visits to your blog?” I’m not doing this for anyone but myself, but I’m smart enough to realize that the reason I’m not just jotting these thoughts down in a diary is that I get something out of the possibility that others might enjoy/be provoked by/be stimulated by something I’ve written. If all I ever posted was links to other stuff, I can see how that might be useful but it wouldn’t even come close to scratching the itch I’m trying to scratch. You guys all have different itches, apparently, so just keep posting your once-a-week links-to-other-sites, but no complaining when no one has anyone to say about them!!

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