Saturday, October 10, 2009

I'm not a good blogger, but you can be one

First off, thanks to Jane Friedman at her There Are No Rules blog for mentioning My Name Is Not Bob as one of her 15 Worthy Blogs I Just Discovered!

It's great to get any kind of recognition, so making a top-anything list at Jane's awesome blog is awesome. But I feel a bit like an impostor, because My Name Is Not Bob does not follow any of the common rules of blogging.

First off, I haven't posted anything in like a month. Maybe more. First rule of blogging is to post regularly. Not daily, but at least weekly. Even at my Poetic Asides blog, I have a weekly Wednesday Poetry Prompt that I NEVER miss (even the week when I was hospitalized).

Second, I'm too lazy with this blog to even see if it's actually been a month or more since I've posted. Lazy is not an attractive feature for any blog--unless the blog is called Lazy Blog for Lazy People (even then, your audience is so lazy that they'd never check out the blog).

Third, there's no central theme tying My Name Is Not Bob together. Going back to Poetic Asides, the central theme there is all things poetry. Poetry prompts, poetry workshops, poet interviews, poetic forms, and other poetry-related stuff. My Name Is Not Bob is not a specialized center of information, instead it's like a flea market or yard sale of random what-have-yous.

So, if you want to immediately have a better blog than My Name Is Not Bob, here's all you have to do:
  1. Post regularly. At least once a week.
  2. Work at it. Don't spend hours on each post, but be willing to check facts, link to other sources, and proofread before posting.
  3. Create a central focus or identity for your blog. Poetic Asides is for poetry; Jane's There Are No Rules blog is for writers trying to find success in publishing and other media. (Note: Having a blog with a clear identity that has readers can help you develop your platform, which can help you publish books, get speaking gigs, etc.)

Three easy steps you can take to have a great blog. If you don't have one yet, make one (it's free and only takes a few minutes). If you do have one, make sure you're following these rules that My Name Is Not Bob is so blatantly not.

*****

Random good news: Poem accepted by OCHO recently. That's the second poem accepted by OCHO this year (for two separate issues), and both deal with my father. Maybe that father-son relationship will eventually develop into a chapbook.

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This weekend: Tammy, Reese, Will and I are having a Hallo-weekend together. This means breaking out the Halloween decorations, telling scary stories, watching scary movies for kid scary movie night, drawing spooky pictures, getting out to the pumpkin farm, and more Halloween and autumn tomfoolery.

And tonight, Tammy will be interviewed by Joe Milford for his popular poetry interview series, The Joe Milford Poetry Show.

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Random thought: I can NOT get the freaking Wonder Pets theme song out of my head. If you do not want to suffer the same fate, do NOT click on this link.

(Wonder Pets, Wonder Pets, we're on our way...blah-blah-blah...and save the day; we're not too big, and we're not too tough, but when we work together, we've got the right stuff; gooooooooooooo Wonder Pets! Yay!)

3 comments:

Jessie Carty said...

no no i will not click through! after a week with my sister i was stuck hearing "rescue pack, coming to the rescue" !!!

Anonymous said...

I recently saw another blog get an award which hadn't updated in some time. Perhaps this is some sort of ironic fourth blogging rule:

4. To win a blog award, stop updating.

Haha. But that's okay, a blog can be organic as well. It takes a while to get used to it; to know what the theme is, how best to update, and how often is enough. It's a process.

... Paige said...

It's ok, I don't write off (haha) blogs till they stop posting all together and state that intention.

But I do expect more post from you...I'd say at least once a month if for nothing more than to say lil Will is doing well.

I like flea markets and yard sales.