I receive plenty of emails asking for advice about how to blog, about blog topics and about creating meaningful content. These are the answers and recommendations we tend to give.
1.
Define Your Ideal Readers; Once
you’ve found your niche, you need to know who will be reading your blog. For
example, we blog about living intentionally. Thus, our ideal readers are
people who are interested in exploring minimalism so they can clear the path
toward more meaningful lives. If you want to write about your newborn baby
growing up, that’s wonderful: your ideal readers are probably your friends and
family. If you want to write about restoring classic cars, that’s cool, too.
Tailor your writing to your readers (whether it’s your family or local
community or whoever else will read your blog).
2.
Add Value; Your
blog must add value to its readers’ lives. This is the only way you will get
Great Quality Readers to your site (and keep them coming back). Adding value is
the only way to get someone’s long-term buy-in. We both learned this after a
decade of leading and managing people in the corporate world.
3.
Be Original; Yes,
there are other blogs out there about the same thing you want to write about.
Question: So why is your blog different? Answer: Because of you. You are what
makes your blog different. It’s about your perspective, your creativity,
the value that you add. try to express
yourself. Be yourself.
4.
Be Interesting; Write epic, awesome content. Especially if you want
people to share it with others. Use your own idea.
5.
Be Yourself; Part
of being interesting is telling your story.
Every person is unique, and your story is an important one. The important part
of storytelling, however, is removing the superfluous details that make the
story uninteresting. A great storyteller removes 99% of what really happens—the
absorptive details—and leaves the interesting 1% for the reader.
6.
Be Honest; Your
blog needs to be authentic—it needs to feel real—if
you want people to read it. You can be your blog, or your blog can be you. That
is, do you really embody the stuff you write about? If not, people will see
through you. “Be the change you want to see in the world,” is the famous Gandhi
quote. Perhaps bloggers should build the blog they want to write for the world.
7.
Transparency; Being
transparent is different from being honest. You needn’t share every detail
about your life just for the sake of being honest. Always be honest, and be
transparent when it adds value to what you’re writing. (You won’t ever see
pictures of us using the restroom on our site, because that’s just not
relevant.)
8.
Time; Once
you’ve learned how to start a blog, you’ll learn that blogging takes a lot of
time, especially if you’re as neurotic as we are (we spent over 10 hours
testing the fonts on this site). And see those black Twitter and Facebook icons
in the header? We spent hours on those, deciding what was right for us). That
said, once you have your design set up, don’t tweak it too much. Instead, spend
the time on your writing.
9.
Vision; The
reason our site design looks good is because we have a great host, we have a great theme, and most important, we had a
vision of how we wanted our blog to look. Once we had the vision, we worked
hard to make that vision a reality. (Note: neither of us had any design
experience prior to starting a blog.) It’s hard to create a beautiful blog if
you don’t know what you want it to look like.
10.
Find Your Voice; Over
time, good writers discover their voice and their writing tends to develop a
certain aesthetic, one that is appealing to their readers. Finding your voice
makes your writing feel more alive, more real, more urgent. For additional
reading, check out Joshua’s essay about Finding
Your Voice.
11.
We Instead of You; Use
the the first-person plural when possible. Statements of we and our are more
powerful than than you and your, especially when talking about negative behaviors
or tendencies. The first person comes off as far less accusatory. Think of it
this way: we’re writing peer-to-peer—we are not gods.
12.
When to Post; Question:
When is the best day and time to publish a blog post? Answer: It doesn’t really
matter. We don’t adhere to a particular schedule. Some weeks we post one essay;
sometimes we post three. Yes, it is important to write consistently, but
you needn’t get too bogged down in the details.
13.
Social Media. Yes,
we recommend using Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram to
help connect with your audience and other bloggers, but don’t get too caught up
in it. Focus on the writing first, social media thereafter.
14.
Ignore Negative Criticism and
Stupidity. Sure, we get a lot of negative comments and stupid
questions from ignorant people who aren’t really our readers (e.g., negative
comments like “You’re not real minimalists” and stupid questions like “Are you
guys gay?”). We call these people seagulls:
they fly in, crap on your site, and fly away. But we pay them no mind, because
we didn’t start our blog for them. Delete their comment and move on.
15.
Research. Spend
time researching what you’re writing about. The reason we are able to use so
many helpful, relevant links in our essays is because we put in the time to
research our topics.
16.
Keep It Simple. This
is where minimalism can be applied to starting any blog, irrespective of its
genre. No need to place superfluous advertisements or widgets all over your
site. Stick to the basics and remove anything you don’t need. Remove anything
that doesn’t add value.
17.
Picture. Put a
picture of yourself on your blog. People identify with other people. If two
goofy guys from Ohio aren’t too afraid to put their pictures on their site,
then you have nothing to worry about.
18.
Comments. If
you’re going to have comments on your site, then read The Five Words That Kill Your Blog by
Scott Stratten.
19.
Live Your Life.
You’re blogging about your life (or about certain aspects of your life, at
least), so you still need to live your life. There are things that we always
put before writing: exercise, health, relationships, experiences, personal
growth, contribution.
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