Listening to Merlin Mann’s series on how to improve your blog was most instructive. Mann, who blogs at 43Folders amongst other places, gave sensible advice, all of which I agreed with, but none of which I actually follow. Here’s a quick run through.
Focus on one topic
The idea is that by focusing on your obsession you will build up a dedicated readership, whereas if you just write about whatever you fancy, people lose interest because your venn diagrams cross so infrequently. It is true that most of the people who read me have one thing in common and that is that they know me in some way, but I like the idea of eclectic blogging, of never knowing what the blogger is going to say next.
Manage Expectations
Even if you do write about one thing, you have to be careful not to annoy people by posting too often or not often enough. People, the implication goes, cannot bear to read anything that is slightly different in form or tone. Surely that isn’t true.
Target your Audience
Mann suggests the neat trick of imagining ten ideal readers of your blog as a way of helping you to write better. You should choose one and stick a picture of them above your computer. My ideal reader is Nina Hamnett whose portrait (by Roger Fry) I used to love when I went to Courtauld Gallery. Unfortunately, she is dead and even when she was alive she was a drunkard. So much for the ideal reader.
Get Better
You should treat your writing like a craft, tweaking it, improving it, going back and correcting those annoying spelling mistakes. Don’t just do what I do and write something then click ‘Post’ or your blog will be full of self-indulgence, factual inaccuracy, and grammatical errors. Mann recommends letting things settle for a few days . . . Unfortunately, if I thought more than I do about my blog more than I already do I would probably never write and certainly never post. Oddly, the posts that seem to get the most comments are those that are written the quickest.
Writing a blog every day has been an excellent exercise, but I don’t particularly want to become a problogger or anything ghastly like that. I feel a bit like a carpenter who knocks out simple chairs but wants to make a nave for a church one day; that is, I’m still not sure if chair-making is the best preparation.