Tag Archives | blogging

This is the 399th blog post I’ve written in the span of about a year and a half here at The Anti-Social Media. That’s 399 blog posts in 548 days, or about 7 tenths of a blog post a day (I like to keep the other 3 tenths saved in my nest egg for a rainy day). It also includes 200 unique comics, not counting the ones I create for speeches and presentations.

That’s more swearing, bitching, and whining than most people do in their entire lifetime.

Long-term blogging is hard, even for experts. There’s only so much we can write about, and only so many ways we can say it. We’re human. We lose interest. We have other obligations off of the internet, like survival and feeding our cats.

Thankfully, I blog about social media, where everything changes every two weeks and Facebook keeps shooting itself in the foot. I’ll never run out of material.

Bloggers, both old and new, is it hard for you to blog frequently? Is it worth it? Do you even care? I want to know what the other people who spend their time writing on the internet think of the madness we put ourselves through.

Earlier this week I watched The Human Centipede, which is probably the worst idea for a movie ever. If you haven’t seen it, you’re not missing anything except for terrible imagery which will haunt our society for the next decade and a half.

Still, watching it gave me a terrible idea that I had to share on here because that’s what the internet is for, right? Sharing terrible ideas that should rather be kept quietly to oneself.

It seems there are less original thoughts than ever before. Hollywood makes less original movies. Everything seems to be a remake. Blogs reblog other blogs.

Instead of thinking and brainstorming and coming up with new and original ideas, we are instead like a human centipede. We just take the ideas that someone else has come up with and shit out at the last minute on their blog, digest it, and then shit out something even more terrible for people, who digest it and send it on.

I know great minds sometimes think alike, but they also need to think differently. How useful is your blog if you are just reacting to what everyone else is doing? Retweeting is nice, but don’t you have an original thought to share?

We often talk about curation, but that’s really just a  nice verb to say “I don’t have original thoughts. But these people do.” There are enough “Me toos” and “This is great!” But you’re smarter than that. Write something original. Take a nice photo. Make a cool video. Do something that proves your brain can do more than just share.

But who am I kidding. Most people can’t think beyond a Facebook status.

F*%k it. I’m just gonna go share everything on Mashable.

So, it’s Friday morning at 5 am and I can’t find anything about Facebook to be funny and angry about. It’s like Zuckerberg is onto me and hideas all the good and weird Facebook content. I’m also blaming the yoga class I took earlier this week. While I had hoped  it would focus my mind on my ideas and give me a zen-like rage, instead my shoulders feel like they want ot fall off and I’m feeling more relaxed than I have in months.

Obviously I need to try a different exercise routine, like kick boxing, karate, or something else filled with violence towards imaginary enemies.

Coming up with good blog post ideas consistently is hard. That’s why there are entire blogs devoted to blog post ideas. Hell, that’s why some people even make services where you can buy blog post ideas. How sad is it that as bloggers, we put such tremendous pressure on ourselves that we have to pay for someone else’s idea to go on our blog?

So f#*k good ideas. This is just a blog about social media, and a crazy one at that. Who said that I need good ideas for blog posts?

There’s nothing that I hate more on any blog than comments that were written by human beings that make no sense. Comments filled with typos. Comments that are unrelated to the discussion. Comments that are intended to make people look stupid.

These are blogs people, not Yahoo! News. We don’t want our descendants to look through all this crap hundreds of years from now and think “Wow. How stupid were they? How did we last this long? And did people really take the rapture that seriously?”

Ask yourself there three questions before you push that “Add Comment” button:

• Does it add to the discussion? - Has someone else said what you want to say? Can you make a valid counterpoint? Does it bring new insight that people haven’t seen before? Think of what you can add before you type  a five page manifesto.
• Does it have context? - Are you just posting a link to your own crappy blog with out any text? Are you talking about something completely unrelated? The easiest way to get banned from a blog or chewed out by an author is by posting something that comes out of the blue.
• Does it make sense? - The author of the blog took time to write something that other people can read and will make sense when other people come along and read it. Do the same with your comment. Check for typos and grammar errors. Read it out loud to make sure it reads correctly.

It’s not that hard to make yourself look somewhat intelligent. You did this to get through school, and  you can do this on blogs too.

And if you can’t, don’t comment. Stop filling up the internet with mindless dribble and crazy conspiracy theories. My cat can share better things than that nonsense.

I’m a terrible reader.

When I was young, they tested me for being gifted and talented. It turned out I can solve mathematical problems like nobody’s business. But, if you asked me to look for meaning beyond the face value of the words set down in front of me, I fail miserably.

That’s why it never surprises me when people take things out of context online.

It’s easy to humanize someone talking in front of you. You see their face and hear the words coming from their lips. Their tone rises and falls, and they gesture with their words. It’s easier to figure out what they intended, because it’s right there in front of you, and if you’re still not getting it, you can be a moron and ask them.

Humanizing an avatar is much harder. You can’t tell how much suffering happens to a face that’s always smiling. You can ask someone to explain, but your explanation comes from more words.  Reading between the lines becomes a chore.

Unfortunately, we’re bombarded with too much information to make that effort. Reading online is a chore, not a pleasure. Where before we had to think deeply about what the author meant because we couldn’t reach them, we can now take thirty seconds and reach out to the author.

Is the answer to think harder? To write better? To just ask the author? A combination  I don’t know.

The only thing I know is there is always a human behind the words, and that human has more of story to tell than what little they blogged.

I haven’t taken a weekday off blogging since January.

I’m changing that today. I need a day where I don’t have to worry about writing a long crazy blog post.

See you all tomorrow!

Use the blogging platform that you will actually use to blog.

With all of today’s blogging platforms, ranging from the level of “So simple my dog could use it,” to “For advanced Linux users only,” there’s a blog platform for everyone. I don’t really judge what blog platform you use, but I will judge you if you don’t blog with any sense of regularity. I want to read awesome content regularly, regardless of the medium.

So try lots of different blog software. Find which platforms you like and which ones you hate. Compare features. See which software you can use to get the blog looking nice and which ones make you want to stab your computer with a pitchfork.

When you find the blog software you love, or the one that causes the least amount of physical pain, and use it. Love it. Make awesome content.

If you’re writing well, your readers won’t care what’s behind the scenes.

This past Saturday I spoke on a panel about blogging to students at the UNC SMART Conference. The conference was a short, half day event designed and put on by Career Services, and was quite successful for their first effort to put on a social media focused event for the students.

Blogging while in school is a very conflicting topic. I was told once I should blog about my honors thesis on sexuality in cartoon music. As fun and interesting as that was, I’m sure that all of my past and future employers would love to be reading that document right now and learning about how many cartoons I watched and how I perverted them. Really, I want everyone to think I’m some some kind of kinky, cartoon-obsessed freak in addition to being a social media sociopath.

So, while blogging never worked out for me as a student, there was more I wanted to say though to the students listening to my panel. These are the major highlights I think I or the  panel missed that we should have covered.

• There are hundreds of reasons to blog - While we may have focused on careers, there are lots of great reasons to start a blog that have nothing to do with being professional. Maybe you just like to tell funny stories. Maybe you want to show off your cool drawings. Or maybe you want to take videos of your cat and then force hundreds of people to watch them. All of these are just as acceptable and qualified a reason to blog as someone who write about business marketing, and sometimes it’s easier to build and connect with an audience around these topics.
• Emphasize quality over quantity - Given the time, we can all write 100 crappy blog posts. If you’re a student who’s transitioning and looking for a new job, writing posts that are quality is more important than quantity.
• Nobody is perfect - There are millions of bloggers out there all with different agendas and purposes. Just because one blogger is successful doesn’t mean you will be, and for most blogs there is no straight-forward path to success. We all make mistakes, and we all can do better. Just do your best with your resources and you’ll be fine.
• Stick to a schedule - Readers hate blogs without any kind of schedule. It makes it hard for them to know when to come by. Figure out what you can do, and start blogging on that schedule. Similarly, if you have a schedule, and you can’t keep up with it, rethink it. There is no right or wrong answer about how much and how often you are supposed to blog. Again, think quality.
• Have fun -  You’re young. You don’t have to be a boring, stuffy professional. Your blog should reflect you and your awesomeness. That doesn’t mean you can’t be professional, but you can create something that is new and exciting without having all the baggage of a long career with you.

What would you tell today’s college students about blogging? Embrace the medium? Run for your life? Keep a healthy distance from bloggers like me? Let’s get the kids on a better path to success than we are on.