Advice on blogging

Though I haven't been blogging as long as some of the more established bloggers here in the WoW blagoblag, I have been blogging long enough to learn my fair share of lessons about blogging. Blogging is an interesting hobby, and a fun one for those who enjoy writing and want to be read without the usual pressures of writing for a commercial outlet. Though there are certainly other great articles out there on the interwebs with advice on blogging, it never hurts to put one's own wisdom out there as well, and that's exactly what I intend to do here.

1. If you want to blog, you better enjoy writing.

I'll be honest; I put this rule here more to discuss it than to just state it. I say that because, before I started blogging, I thought I didn't enjoy writing. However, that was mostly because the extent of my writing had been academic writing, hardly a fun form of it. The few times that I wrote of my own volition, I did enjoy it, but I was never able to stick with any one project because I simply had no motivation to stick with it. Blogging was my savior in that it gave me the perfect medium to exercise my writing muscles. Blogging is a good outlet for writers who enjoy writing but can't stick with any one piece for very long. The fact that most posts are self-contained entities means that you don't need a long attention span to blog successfully, since posts don't take a long time to write (compared to writing short stories or novels). The prospect of being read is also good motivation to stick with it, but even that will only take you so far.

Here is where I would say that if you don't enjoy writing, you shouldn't blog, but what I will instead say is this: if you feel that blogging itch, then even if you think you don't enjoy writing, give blogging a chance. It may be the outlet you were looking for to start writing consistently. If you don't want to make the commitment of starting a blog, then try just writing some entries in a Word document for a week or so. That way, if you do start blogging, you'll have some starter material to work with, and if you find out you don't like writing in a blog-like format, no harm done.

That said, you'll figure out pretty quickly whether or not you enjoy writing. To paraphrase WoW.com, unless you already have a reputation for thoughtful commentary, useful advice, or for being entertaining (if Alamo had a blog, I would read it), you'll be starting from scratch. If any of those cases apply to you, then you probably enjoy writing already, since you probably had to write a lot to build up such a reputation (unless you had one funny post that made you infamous for life). If that's not the case, you'll need to build a reputation of some kind if you want to be read, but that takes time. Until that happens, you'll be writing for the sake of writing. Some can do that, as I did for my first five months of blogging. Some, however, will find that, without anything tangible motivating them to write, they just can't do it, and there's nothing wrong with that. Blogging is a hobby, and if you don't enjoy it, you shouldn't force yourself to do it.

2. If you want to be read, you need to have something to say.

The great thing about blogging is that you can add your own unique voice to whatever you write about. That's why people read more than just two or three blogs: even if people say that same thing, no one says it quite like how another person says it. That's why people want more from your blog than links to other posts. Sure, there's a place for such posts, but that place is as a starting point for your commentary. We have already established that to successfully blog, you need to enjoy writing, so a blog consisting of unoriginal content is really a cop-out of real blogging. If you want people to read your posts, you need to give them a reason to read them, and if you are simply posting things they can find elsewhere, why should they read your post at all?

To put this advice into practical terms, avoid posts that only consist of a brief introduction followed by something you copied and pasted from elsewhere. This means no posts whose only purpose is to contain patch notes, blue posts, other blogger's posts or anything like that. It's far better to post those things and follow them with your own commentary. Even if you feel as if you have nothing to say about it, sometimes the simplest comments are the most effective at getting people thinking and commenting on your post.

3. Be consistent.

When I say be consistent, I mean it in two ways: One, keep your topics consistent. Two, post consistently. People read blogs because they like what they read, so if you want to keep people reading, it helps to stick with a theme. Even if that theme is something simple like stories from when you play, commentary on other posts, a class or two, or anything else, people will come to expect that theme from your blog. Keeping readers happy requires giving them what you have taught them to expect, so don't write posts that are all over the place in terms of topic.

On that note, it helps when your readers know when to expect a new post. Believe it or not, some of us still check blogs manually rather than just subscribing to them and forgetting them until our feed is updated. As such, we like to know when a post will go up so we don't need to check constantly to see if the blog has updated yet. Not seeing a blog update can be disheartening to your readers and make them less motivated to read your blog, but if they know when to expect a post, this will not be an issue. Keep to a schedule, even if it's only a loose one, and let your readers know if that schedule is going to change.

4. Write about what you know and what you enjoy writing about.

I write many of my advice posts about the Druid class because I know a lot about the druid class. I write my philosophy posts because I enjoy philosophy and I enjoy philosophizing about... well, everything, so that includes WoW. As I said earlier, one of most important aspects of blogging is keeping yourself motivated to write. If you write about what you know, then writing will be easier since you'll be able to draw mostly from your own knowledge, rather than needing to research your information, and writing about what you enjoy writing about will certainly make writing more enjoyable, further motivating you to stick with it. Both of these points simply make blogging more fun, and as I have said, if you don't enjoy blogging, why do it?

5. Write down any ideas you have

There have been a few times when I had a great idea for a post and it was never written because I simply forgot it (or maybe they were horrible ideas; we'll never know). If an idea for a post strikes you, write it down or make note of it somehow. Even if you don't use it immediately, it helps to have a reserve of back-up ideas when you want to stay consistent with your posting but can't think of anything to write about. That said, it's also important to write down a bit of exposition about your ideas. I have a few ideas languishing in disuse because I never wrote down any details to them and can't for the life of me figure out where I was planning on going with them. So, when you write down your ideas, think about them for a while and jot down a few notes of where you could go with them.

Where should you jot those ideas down? I personally have a draft post that I have set to be published in the year 2020, and I keep my ideas written down in that post. Why 2020? Because, that way, it's always on the top of my list when I go to the "Edit Posts" page, and if I accidentally hit the Publish button, there's no risk of all of my ideas being open to the world. You can also keep a plain text file on your desktop to hold your ideas, or use the Stickies application if you are on a Mac. Just do whatever works for you.

6. Don't be afraid to evolve, and don't preclude yourself from doing so.

People change; it's a fact of life, and your interests are no exception. You may be a dedicated raider now, but you may one day find more entertainment in PvP. You may be dedicated to one class now and be dedicated to another in the future. You may stop playing casually and get really into theorycraft. If those changes happen, you're blogging habits will likely reflect those changes, and you'll be forced to change the direction and focus of your blog. This is not a bad thing. Writing about a part of the game you no longer enjoy or engage in just makes no sense. As such, don't be afraid of changing the focus of your blog; while you may lose a large part of your readership if they have grown accustomed to one thing and you start writing about something else, there's just no way to avoid that.

With that stated, you should be proactive and not preclude yourself form making such a change should your interests shift. Don't lock yourself down with a blog name or domain name that is too specific unless you are very sure you won't be deviating from that subject area. I called my blog "WoW Philosophized" because I knew that I love philosophy, a fact that is not likely to change in the future. There is nothing else entailed in that blog title, so it was a good choice. Now, if I called my blog "The Philosophical Tank," that would have made my title a misnomer when I switched to restoration being my main spec or when I went from being a frequent tanker of heroics to being more of an ineffectual loner. Had I called this blog "The Philosophizing Druid," that would have made things sticky when I started focusing more on my Shaman or Priest alt.

I think you see where I am going with this. Though it helps for your blog name to reflect the focus of your blog, don't pick one that locks you into writing about something you may lose interest it. If you give your blog a more general title and use the description to say what your focus will be, you can change the description when your interests change without needing to make a big adjustment to the site, like changing your URL. And hey, if you end up going through your entire blogging career without making any changes to your focus, no harm done.


There's my advice for you start-up bloggers out there. If I were to try to summarize all this advice in one sage tidbit, I wouldn't be able to, but I will leave you with the most important piece of advice I can give any beginning blogger: enjoy it. Blogging, like WoW, is a hobby, something done for pleasure to occupy oneself in one's spare time. As much as some of you may do it for your readers, who may depend on your advice, wisdom, or commentary, if you get nothing out of blogging, it's not worth doing. Keep your blogging experience fun, and you won't regret it.

This post last edited for grammar and spelling issues on 11/1/10, 10:40 PM. No changes to the actual content were made.