Tips For Maintaining a Blog

This is not about starting a blog, what service or software to use, or anything of that nature. Rather, it is about maintaining a blog after you have it started.

It's easy to start a blog. Just sign up at a service like http://blogger.com/ (or WordPress.com), or install software like WordPress from http://wordpress.org/ and go for it.

After starting it, a blog wants to be maintained. It wants fresh posts or articles. It wants it often. And not just anything will do; it wants things people like to read.

Without fresh content, a blog gets stale. It withers. It becomes another statistic. (see Site Management)

http://caslon.com.au/weblogprofile1.htm says, "Several studies indicate that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation and that few are regularly updated."

The same page talks about a survey of over 4 million blogs. In essence, the survey found that 66% had not been updated in two months and that over a million were one-day wonders.

It's easy to start a blog. But effort and consistency are required to maintain one.

A blog is defined here as a web page of often updated content, with a theme, and with an index to past blog posts. The significant aspects of the definition being "with a theme" and "often updated."

It's a very loose definition, and encompasses personal journal-type blogs through corporate meeting-type blogs, so long as they are updated, whether intermittently or on a regular schedule, at least bi-weekly.

To date, with our various blogs, Mari and I have made 644 blog entries. One of our blogs is updated every Tuesday. Others are updated intermittently, sometimes daily and sometimes with many days between posts.

Here are a few things we have learned:

Blogging is a state of mind —

One learns to have mental antennae tuned for blogging opportunities.

Maintaining a personal blog fosters a constant lookout for things others might find interesting, instead of going through life with only one's own interests to satisfy. A personal blog is at http://lightfocus.com/blog.shtml

Another example is a business blog, which can use customer questions and concerns as a basis for blog posts. There may be product use tips, posts about new product launches, and links to sites of particular interest for their customers.

Those who publish on the business blog will notice things their customers might find interesting during the normal fulfillment of their primary job description, a perspective not shared by those who do not blog. A software business blog is at http://willmaster.com/

A blogging state of mind is no guarantee of having anything to say. But it does help to spot opportunities.

Prepare before starting a blog —

Before starting a blog, prepare a list of ideas, enough for a month or at least 10 posts.

If you can't think of a month worth of posts, don't start the blog. It will probably stagnate.

The list of ideas will help see you through one or more dry spells as you attain the blogging state of mind.

Nobody cares if you have a cold and can't write —

If you don't provide for them, your regular readers will go somewhere else and, quite likely, rude as it may seem, forget about your blog.

Try to keep several ideas for posts handy, and a few prewritten posts, for those days when you are unable to think of or compose new original content.

If you're not sure, wait a day —

Wait a day and then review your post if you have doubts that it expresses what you want to say.

Write something else for this day, or skip a day if you post intermittently. Remember, it's not just content your blog wants, but content interesting to its readers.

Know your subject —

If you're going to blog, know your subject. If you don't, your theme will waiver and morph until it is something you do know about, anyway.

Some blogs can be maintained with posts bolstered by research. Others require an intimate knowledge of the subject. http://affinity-numerology.com/blog/ is an example of the latter.

Some personal is good —

Tidbits about yourself are good — feelings or observations or other clues that let your readers know you as a human being with unique characteristics. However, unless your blog's theme is about you, stick with tidbits. Readers like to feel they know you, but they are at your blog for the regular content you provide.