This started as a comment on another site. After I posted the comment I realized it was a good statement on why I blog. So I re-posted it here. Oddly, the blogger never allowed my comment. Was I scant on praise perhaps? Did not heap the adulation high enough?

I don’t use Facebook or Twitter so my blog will never be popular. When I started blogging five years ago my subject was the building of fixie and single-speed bicycles so my audience was, by necessity, pretty circumscribed.

Later, I wrote on generalized topics or as a kind of blog journal. Like Jerry Seinfeld’s show about ‘nothing’, my blog has no particular topic or theme-it’s about ‘nothing’ in particular.

This is not a format designed to attract viewers, much less ‘followers’. Yet I have over one hundred! At least at last count, because I almost never check my blog’s stats, pointless if you’re not not trying to pump up readership.

And I sometimes ask myself “why in the world are some people around the globe reading my little blog?” If they like my bike or boat or travel blog posts they will surely hate my politics, paleo food or attempted humor posts (always a minefield!).

The answer is that readers will stumble across your post and find it interesting. So it helps readership to write interesting posts. And viewers like pretty pictures so that helps too.

I write because I am a writer. Writers need to write. I would miss it if I took down my site. Of course it hurts not to be read by others, it can feel masturbatory-but that’s not so bad!

So I write basically for myself. I read old posts and think “I must have been pretty mentally fucked up when I wrote this”. Or else “that was a good post, too bad I’m its only reader”.

So blogging for me is like therapy, which my life contains lots of. If the post gets read by others then I get a little jolt. If not, too bad, world, you missed a good one with some pretty pics.

If it worried me I suppose I’d sell my soul (and all marketable personal data), join Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, start pimping my blog and put in a ‘tip jar’ to monetize it. But I just don’t seem to care.

Please don’t follow the following advice as I have a low viewer and ‘follower’ count. It could happen to you!

1) Edit.
Write and then rewrite. Initially, put it ALL down with wild abandon. Then edit the crap out of it.

Brevity is the soul of wit. Are you sure that word is the right one? Are you sure you really need that phrase or digression?

2) Use more white space.
Reading on a phone, tablet or PC is very hard compared to paper.

Use short paragraphs and lots of white space, carriage returns and line spaces. Big blocs of text are too intimidating.

3) Use Categories and Tags.
These breadcrumbs help the reader navigate your posts as well as giving the would-be reader a tip on the post’s topic.

4) Use Pictures and Illustrations.
Readers are pretty busy and just as lazy as you are. Pic heavy posts are easy and quick to view-they can be popular.

Most importantly, just keep blogging. Perseverance is the key to any endeavor, however you define ‘success’. We all blog for lots of reasons. Happy blogging.
‘Tod Germanica’

 

Unless noted, all text and images produced and copyrighted by todgermanica.com.
Non-commercial, non-political, non-religious, non-ideological use free with attribution.