My Blog = My Life: blogging "rules"

  • Are people ditching your blog before they ever read it?

    Are people ditching your blog before they ever read it?

    We've talked about having a nerd blog, and how that can affect your ability to attract followers. Today I want to talk more specifically about the time you take with each post and what you need to do to make your posts look good.

    Too often I visit other blogs and leave before reading anything because the posts themselves are visually unappealing or headache inducing. And I'd be willing to bet a lot of other people leave after landing on those blogs as well. The sad thing is, no matter how good they are, those posts never get read, and so I never know whether the blogger is worth reading or following.
    So, today I want to give you my six big rules for making each and every post look awesome.

    1. Break your blog post into readable paragraphs. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that will send me away from a blog post (or an email) faster than something that was written with few or no line breaks. Looking at a huge, solid chunk of text will make your blog unfollowable. Even paragraphs that are too large will be an eyesore. My advice, keep your very longest paragraphs to around 125 words and your average paragraphs to 40-60 words.
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  • Five Rules You Should Immediately Forget About Blogging

    Five Rules You Should Immediately Forget About Blogging

    There are thousands of webpages and blogs telling you how you should blog, the vast majority of whom actually have no clue how to turn your blog into a big blog. Most of them have been started by people who, usually with good intentions, want to make a quick buck advertising, so they glom the content off of other blog building blogs, write quick generic blog posts, and hope for traffic. While there are a few very high quality, good sources out there, most of what you read on other "blog building" blogs must be taken with a grain of salt.

    Now, I'm going to say something that might be hard to swallow. The truth to blogging is that there are no "rules." None. Zero. Zip. Nada.

    But, here are a few of the ones going around, all of which you should immediately forget.

    Rule #1. To make a blog big you have to come up with something completely different than any other blog.
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