Tuesday, April 19, 2011

My Top 3 Bits of Advice for Blogging

A friend of mine called me today who wanted to talk about blogging. He was looking for advice on whether to get started blogging or not.  We talked quite a bit about blogging but ultimately I left him with three thoughts that I feel are the most important for blogging.

Here they are:

1) Know Your Goal

Are you blogging to attract clients, to attract distant cousins or to share your knowledge about a geographic region or a particular topic?  If you are a professional genealogist, make sure your blog posts talk about types of projects that would attract your ideal type of client.  When attracting distant cousins make sure you write about those ancestors that you might share in common.

2) Write from Your Heart

Your blog will become a labor if you don't write from your heart.  Write about what truly interests you and inspires you. If you have to force yourself to write you will soon tire of blogging or at the very least will not enjoy the process and it will feel like work.

3) Stick to Guns

Don't let yourself be influenced by other people when it comes to how you present your blog and what you write about.  The one person determining your content should be you.  Write about what feels comfortable.  That goes for your writing style too.  Don't feel that you need to write in a certain way or show a certain personality to attract readers.  Just be true to yourself and review your goal every once in a while and hopefully it will all flow naturally.


Photo Credit: Photo by jkavo under the creative commons attribution license
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6 comments:

  1. Amy Coffin, MLISApril 21, 2011 at 12:44 PM

    Well said!

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  2. Judy WebsterApril 21, 2011 at 6:15 PM

    Thanks for the advice. I need to give more thought to my goals. I hope I did the right thing when I created several locality-specific genealogy blogs (UK/Australia, Yorkshire, Queensland) in addition to the more general 'Genealogy Leftovers'.

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  3. Dr. Bill (William L.) SmithApril 23, 2011 at 9:31 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Dr. Bill (William L.) SmithApril 23, 2011 at 9:32 PM

    Thank you, Marian, I think I needed that assurance!

    @Judy - I think I'll post about this issue, on my next Follow Friday, using Marian's post here as a referral. I have three or four blogs that I need to maintain, for me. How we each handle them, in line with our goal, is the challenge.

    ;-)

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  5. Linda GartzMay 1, 2011 at 9:35 PM

    All good advice, especially the "write from the heart." if we're not connected deeply to what we write about, who else will be?

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  6. Kathy ReedSeptember 27, 2011 at 9:37 AM

    I know I read this post once before, but since I'm teaching a class to potential new bloggers, this is good advice.

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