Yesterday, I said I would do I series of posts about blogging to try to answer some of the questions, posed both here and on other blogs, about the rules of blogging. For those who missed it, Molly Campbell wrote a wonderful post, titled “Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Writing,” that listed the rules of blogging. If you haven’t read it, you really should.
Although those rules are excellent guidelines, they are not hard-and-fast rules. In other words, the rules can be broken. The key is figuring out which rules you can break and how you can break them.
To break the rules without alienating your readers, you have to understand what your blog is about and who your readers are. I’ll get into those topics later this week. Today, though, we have to look at the first question about blogging: Why do you want to blog?
It’s a valid question and it’s one that you must have an answer for (and that answer should be better than, “because everyone’s doing it”). There are many reasons to blog: you have a product you want to sell and a blog is a great way to reach your audience; you have ideas you want to share; you want to interact with like-minded people; you want to showcase your writing style for potential clients; you want to keep in touch with long-distance friends and family.
These are all good reasons to blog. You should reconsider blogging if you want to do it because everyone else is or if you’re doing it because you think you’ll make a fortune off your blog. The reality is that very, very few people make a fortune off their blog and those who have done so probably didn’t get into blogging because they thought it would make them rich. They more likely got into blogging because they had something to share and they thought someone, somewhere, might be interested in what they had to say.
So, please, if you’re getting into blogging for the fame and fortune, you need to rethink that. I’m sure the good people at WordPress would be thrilled if we all became millionaires off our blogs, but it’s just not realistic to think it will happen.
I started blogging because I wanted to write about writing and I wanted to interact with other writers; to share thoughts and ideas. I know I will not become famous or rich from my blog. How do I know this? It comes down to knowing my audience and knowing my topic.
My audience includes people who are freelance writers or want to become freelance writers. They are not people with a lot of disposable income, so charging a fee to read my blog is out of the question. Furthermore, most advertisers know that most writers don’t have a lot of disposable income, so they probably won’t waste their advertising budget on my blog. That leaves me with the option of writing my own books about writing and selling them on the blog, which is possible, but still a ways off.
It is unlikely that any movie/tv producer will read my blog and think, “Hey, freelance writing! There’s a blockbuster in the making. We MUST sign her.”
My expectations for the blog are realistic. I do it because I enjoy writing and I enjoy interacting with other writers.
Now it’s time for you to ask yourself why you want to blog. Knowing that will help determine what your blog is about and who your audience is, both of which I’ll address in upcoming posts (later this week).
As for the rules I break:
Most of my blog posts run 800-1,000 words. I rarely post on a schedule and I have, on occasion, written posts that have nothing to do with writing. But I can do these things because I know what my blog is about, I know my writing strengths and weaknesses, I know and understand my audience and I understand why I blog.
Molly’s rules are fantastic and important, especially for new bloggers, but they can be broken. You just need to know how to do it.
