Blogging mistakes that are best avoided

Blogging in itself is an art form, and it is often said that life often imitates art. As it is with art, so it is with life; what you get is what you give returned. But the beauty (or banality) of life is that while art itself does not need validation or acceptance, for it is what it is, life is not without its demands. There is a point beyond which you just cannot go solo, social interaction is a must for you to succeed and while you might not be seeking validation in any form at all, you do need to interact at your best with the world. Put your best foot forward and all that.

And so, as it is with mortals, we make mistakes. I too have erred on several occasions, and noticing these errors and learning from them is what is needed when you will inevitably mess things up. Not every art work is a masterpiece and not everyone gets things in their lives right the first time out. Here are a list of the cardinal mistakes I have made and hope you make a mental note of it somewhere in the recesses of your mind so that you too do not follow the same mistake-laden path as I.

I let my URL expire

Mind you, I didn’t let this happen on purpose.  It was a lapse which no one wanted to take the blame for, and I most certainly didn’t. When I changed hosts mid-way through the year, I assumed (in my eyes, correctly) that I would get a reminder before the expiry of the contract in question. After all, I get them for my other bills, why not this one? It takes a simple e-mail at the very least. So imagine my surprise when the contract lapsed and I was not aware of this, with both hosting services later playing a game of blame-pong with me in the middle. It was dubbed a case of caveat emptor and I had learnt my lesson. Trust no one (or companies) with an IQ that is room temperature. Get a longer contract if you are truly committed and just pray like hell someone has the common sense to remind you when it’s near expiry.

I got into an online fight

Everyone has an opinion, that’s the beauty of it and the internet, with its conduciveness to anonymity, is the perfect playground for anyone to be bold and come out and say stuff they would never dream of saying in a social setting. You know how it goes. You say something innocuous, someone gets offended, someone calls the other person a derogatory word of some sort and before you know it, wham! World War III is upon us.

In my defence, I was not the aggressor. No, honestly, I wasn’t. It’s just that you cannot expect a human being to be a docile cow. Your views, while inoffensive, will rub someone the wrong way in some remote corner of the globe. And the internet is perfect for getting your otherwise inoffensive opinion to that special someone waiting for you at the other end of a computer.

I attempted to write a post on grammar

The vast, electronic seas of the internet are awash with people with more time on their hands than can be measured by any system man has devised and god forbid you try to correct someone’s grammar. Only do so if your own grounding in grammar is rock solid, like mine. At least I thought mine was, until I wrote a post on typos with two typos. No biggie, right? Wrong! All the grammar Nazis came crawling out of the woodwork with their jibes and taunts, pointing out the delicious irony of it all (I suspect they would have found my salty tears delicious too). It was a free for all, and the comments thread even had a few internet memes and cats laughing at me. Humbled, I offered up an apology, but it had another typo present in it. It was a dark day with no hope in it, and I hope you experience nothing like it.

I ticked off a fellow blogger

Meet the internet. It’s a wonderful place to sound off and generally piss people off more than you might normally and just as it is normally in life, someone’s ego and big mouth cheeses you off so much you wish you could shove a keyboard down their pie hole. I know I did. It’s at times like that you should rein in that anger and channel it in other productive ways. Neighbour’s got a pesky dog that doesn’t stop barking? No problem, dust off that shotgun. Kids meet a new bully at school? No problem, fire the bully in question so badly that he’s a whimpering, simpering pile of snot and tears. Just do not, under any circumstances get into an online fight. Want reasons why you shouldn’t? Look two points up, you reader with a goldfish’s memory, you. No, I refuse to fight with you on why I feel you’re a Goldfish while you say you’re not.

Be a quitter…not.

It’s an irresistible urge…you just get a feeling to leave it all altogether and walk away from your site. Here’s a piece of advice. Don’t do that. Instead, just keep at it one word at a time, piecing together posts you might feel a bit cumbersome and bothersome. The thing is once you’ve stopped contributing to a blog it is as good as dead in the water, it needs constant food for thought to keep it happy and kicking at all times. At a later point, if you feel that you want to blog again (as you inevitably will, it’s a vicious cycle) you will have to start all over again from scratch and it will be a painful process re-acquiring your readership and building a blog up again. Keep things interesting, or as interesting as you can, and keep at it.

Interact

Man is a social animal, and he hunts people down while craving constant communication. Talk to your readers, or at least the ones who pop in every now and again to say hi or even lambast you. It’s critical you establish a connection or a rapport with your readers because they are the life-blood of your blog whether you like it or not (no, it’s not your witty jokes. No one visits you for that. In fact, they’re not even that witty). Talk, poke, tweet, chirp, warble or do whatever else it is you want to…just don’t lose that connect no matter what.

Do not post jokes

Never ever post jokes online. At least the kind that I do, anyhow. You’re not meant to be the second coming of Benny Hill. If you are like me, you are meant to write about effective story-telling and how to get better at it, or how to get published and stuff like that. Taking things in a jocular vein comes nowhere into the picture, even if you feel so strait-jacketed on some days that you just absolutely have to joke and make a mockery of things. Doing things like I do and giving a fake name to the telemarketer or shopping assistant is only funny at a personal level. Don’t try and work your humorous charms online, it can be the very antithesis of all that you want.

In summation

I wish you don’t make the mistakes I did and that these help you, and that somehow your blogging learning curve is reduced exponentially because of me in some small way because everyone, everywhere has something to learn. And what better way to disseminate information than through a blog? It’s got all the thrill of public speaking and none of the sweaty palms it induces. Or maybe it just does that to me, I don’t know.