I’m not an angelic blogger.  I refuse to capitalize ‘i’ if it is the middle of a sentence.  (If we’re so important why don’t we capitalize ‘Me’?)  Typos slip by even using the Firefox spell checker.  My updates are sporadic.  But i do read a few other blogs and stumble into many more.  I wish all did these things.

1. Have a photo on their “About Me” (or should that be a lowercase ‘me’?) page.  I can’t help it.  I like to see who i am talking to.  If there is a picture of the blogger i seem to comment more often.  I just added a few pictures to mine instead of links to places with photos of me.

2. Use there/their/they’re and to/two/too correctly.  Some bloggers are making ten times my annual salary by writing – and yet they can’t write properly.  Note my disclaimer above about the ‘i’ use.  If by chance people have a reason to use ‘their’ when they mean ‘there’ then someone please explain.  Maybe it is a boycott i should join.  Or maybe we should force the language to change and all use ‘thyre’ instead of all three to show how we hate homonyms.

3. Cite sources.  I do my best to link to inspiration for subjects or information i use for posts.  Why?  Because it helps readers take the next step on the subject if they want more.  Problogger inspired me with a shiny $1001 bill to compile this list of 5 things.

4. Have a dialog.  I’m shy around those i don’t know in person but behind a keyboard i can be bold.  I want to hear from people that read my posts (not every post they read though) and i love it when people follow my trail of breadcrumbs from their site back to mine and comment.  Lurkers are alright too – i see them with my hit tracking scripts – but just not quite as satisfying.   Perhaps challenges or prizes are necessary to lure people into participating.  I may try that.

5. Update more often.  I honestly can’t think of a single blog that i check with any regularity that i think updates too often.  I don’t want updates scrolling by like a stock ticker but i don’t need every post to be a novel.  Even if it is just a link to something funny or a photo taken with a camera phone it is nice to see new content streaming in.  I need to work on this also.

Posted 08 May, 2007 | [38] Comments
Categories: Thoughts