How to become an epic blogger: part 1

I have posted a link to a blog I adore in my last post and I would like to talk about blogging today. Blogging has become a big part of my life and I always find time to blog - even on a busy day, when I need to take a break from work, I simply log on and blog for a few minutes. Even if it is just to jot down a few bullet points or to expand on an idea, I enjoy the process. It is not like I sit down and write each piece in one go - rather, I usually take several days to try to develop a piece and allow the ideas to evolve as I work on the piece.

Why should you blog?

I used to take part in forums but I have stopped doing so as they do not offer quality interaction. I find that many people who participate in these forums have very short attention spans and often do not have the patience to read more than a few sentences at a time - also, they do not write more than a sentence or two in response. This creates a very shallow kind of interaction where issues are not properly discussed and it can often lead to a flame wars - now those can get very nasty indeed.

Imagine if you have something to say on a topic - trying to get your point across in a forum is like walking into a crowded room with thousands of people and trying to shout in that room. Maybe a handful of people standing closest to you may be able to hear you and respond, but most of what you say will be drowned out by the noise because everyone else in the room is also trying shout as well and few people are actually listening.

Can you get yourself heard in a room like this?

Now imagine going to a well organized conference where the thousands of delegates are sitting comfortably, listening to you attentively whilst you get on the stage and deliver a speech. That is what I get on my blog - that's me giving a speech to thousands of readers who want to read what I have to say, it is a far better quality of interaction compared to the chaotic forums. To date, I have had 3.4 million hits on my blog - that's a lot of readers. How many people actually read what I wrote on those forums years ago?

So if I have convinced you to start a blog, then here are a few helpful hints as to how to become an epic blogger. There are literally millions of blogs out there on the internet, some are extremely popular but most are read by no more than a handful of people. With my helpful hints, you can make sure that your blog will achieve a certain level of success and not end up like those which were abandoned after a few months.

Pick a topic/ theme you know about

You will write best when you are writing about something you are passionate about - it could be your work, an academic topic that fascinated you at school or university, it could be a hobby, it could be a sport you enjoy or just about anything that gets you excited. What is your blog about? Can you summarize it in one sentence (preferably a very short one)? A few simple answers would be as follows:

"Recipes for making authentic Japanese food at home"
"All about K-pop sensation T-ara"
"Tips on indoor and urban gardening"
"Budget holidays: where to get great bargains"
"The challenges of learning Korean as a foreign language"

You see, all these themes are very clear and you know exactly whom you are targeting with your theme. Take the theme "The challenges of learning Korean as a foreign language" for example, the people going to that blog will be those who are also learning Korean as a foreign language or would like to start learning Korean. It is easy to get your blog off the ground once you have a very specific theme and target audience - that means that you will be able to attract readers to your blog pretty quickly even as a new blogger. By that token, do avoid topics you don't know enough about as you don't want to be exposed as someone who doesn't know what s/he is talking about.

Can I blog about myself?

Now clearly, on my blog, I don't have a theme! I guess the theme is me, it's about my life, it is about the things I do, the experiences I have and my feelings on the world around me as the boy who grew up in Ang Mo Kio and has gone on to work all over the world. That is a rather vague theme but it is not necessarily a problem - I do write very focussed pieces on a few specific themes and I do each topic justice. So there are people who come to my blog to read about Singaporean current affairs, whilst there are others who want to read about learning foreign languages whilst others who want to read about independent travelling or further education.

I do write a lot about myself on my blog and share my experiences.

There are bloggers who do go for this approach where they talk about a variety of themes (and the theme is basically "the blogger" himself/herself) - it can work, but you then need to have the personality to carry such a theme and gain a fan base of people who are interested in you and what you do. It does require you to have a interesting enough life for people to want to follow your blog and a good example of this is the Queen of Singaporean blogosphere Xiaxue. Her latest post is all about her home after renovations - now she doesn't normally blog about interior design, but her readers are interested in all aspects of her life and would enjoy this tour of her home via her blog.

A blog is not Facebook, leave out the mundane details

This is so obvious but I shall say it anyway - keep it interesting. If you have done something amazing, by all means talk about it on your blog. But hey, if you've not done anything worth blogging about - then write about someone else, write about something interesting that is happening. But the moment you write about something that is boring or mundane, you will lose readers.

Do you have anything interesting to say? 

Heck, I see enough mundane, vapid Facebook status updates already from amongst my friends and I have to resist the urge to comment, "honestly, who gives a shit." The same applies for Twitter - gosh the amount of vapid tweets! Feel free to write about an interesting incident that happened many years ago if it will make a good article, if it is something that people will enjoy reading about. It doesn't have to be all about the present - many readers will enjoy "living history", ie. stories told by older people about what life was like many years ago.

Demonstrate clear understanding of both sides of the issue

Remember that there are always two sides to every issue so always try to provide a balanced argument, so as not to alienate any readers who may not agree with your point of view. Always write for your readers (and not yourself), it is about them reading an article on an issue that interests them - it is not all about you. Your challenge is to try to deepen their understanding on the issue whilst providing different points of views and perspectives on it.

So for example, when I am commenting on like the government's population white paper, my point of view is clear: the PAP have lost the plot, 6.9 million is a going to be a total disaster. However, I deliberately played devil's advocate with myself on the issue by writing a piece exploring the issue by looking at cities more densely populated than Singapore - why did I do that? It wasn't to convince myself or my readers that the PAP may actually know what they are doing (no they don't - they are clueless), but rather, to demonstrate that I can put aside my personal opinion as a blogger, talk objectively about the issue and do the other side of the argument justice.

Presentation is vital - avoid WOT

When blogging, you should use the following give your readers a nice experience:

• graphics
• diagrams
• videos
• using different texts/fonts/colours 

The two popular acronyms associated with this are WOT (wall of text) and TL;DR (too long, didn't read).  Many bloggers go one step further and cross over into vlogging - which I have done a bit of, but it just takes too long to edit the videos, so I am sticking to blogging for now. 

Can you sustain your readers' attention?

Write regularly

You need to release new content constantly to sustain your readers attention, so that they know they can expect more articles from you and to subscribe to your blog. I would work on longer pieces for a week, even two weeks - but in the meantime, I may post much shorter articles which are topical just to ensure that my readers do not go more than a few days without getting new content from me.

Choose a writing style that suits you but is also accessible

Firstly, you should always write in a way that is easily read. How wld u feel if id wrote my blog lyk dat? U want 2 read dis?  No, don't be lazy and it is not cute to use informal language that can be hard to decipher on your blog, it will lose you readers when they have to use guesswork to figure out what the hell you are trying to say. It is important to choose a suitable style and you can use the following styles:

• Instructional: a good example of this would be recipes where you teach your readers how to do something step by step with clear instructions, illustrations and photos/videos. 
• Interview Q&A: this is when you interview someone interesting and let them tell their story
• FAQs: this is when you shed light on a topic you know a lot about, by answering questions you think your readers will want to ask 
• Social commentary: this is when you analyse a recent event in the news and you offer your personal insight 
• Diary format: this is when you recount an interesting experience you've had over a period of time
• Aunt Agony: answering a letter from a reader who is facing a problem, offering useful advice
• Cry for help: telling your readers about a problem you cannot solve and asking them to write in with their suggestions, solutions and advice 
• Short story: telling your readers a self-contained story, often concluding with "the moral of the story" 

Of course, you don't need to stick to any of these styles and my blog contains a mix of all of these styles  - the worst blogs are those where people just ramble on and on, talking about their everyday points without actually saying anything important. Select your style and decide what your mission is before writing even a word, you need to know what you are doing before you start to ramble. 

Give punctuation the respect it deserves. 

I have a colleague who writes long rambling emails with no proper punctuation. OMFG, do you know how hard it is to read his emails? It brings out the English teacher in me, to want to correct the bad English. Avoid using three commas like this... unless you know exactly how to use them. It is meant to represent speech trailing off mid-sentence. It is not a cute way to finish a sentence and it is not a substitute for a comma or a full stop!  Let me give you an example. 

As Emma and I stood by the pier, she said to me, "I remember when I was a child, I used to come here with my family in the summer. We would play over there, the beach looked exactly the same back then.  It was back in the early 1970s or maybe..." I waited for her to finish her sentence but she just stood there, staring into space, lost in her memories. 

Know your market - who do you want reading your blog?

If you have a clearly defined theme, then you will be able to answer this question easily. But if you are not quite sure yet, then it is a question you need to think about in order to figure out what style you want to approach and how that will help you grow your readership.

Generate discussions, create a community.

Do not simply lecture your readers on a topic, even if it is one you know very well. Always invite them to offer feedback by leaving comments, so they can generate a discussion with the other readers. This can create a community amongst the readers of your blog and they will in turn invite their friends to read your blog. I call my readers LIFTers as LIFT is the acronym of my blog and I love my LIFTers - without them, I wouldn't be writing. You will form a relationship with your readers and this will be an inspiration for you to keep writing.

Reach out to other bloggers.

If you have a read a blog that you like, then leave a positive comment on their blog and post a link back to your blog. This will encourage them to send traffic from their blog to yours and many bloggers help each other like that. You can also learn a lot from their blogging styles by seeing what works and what doesn't.

Links: Send your readers to other parts of your blog

I do this a lot - say I am talking here about the Olympics, I can send you via a hyperlink to the articles I have written last year about the 2012 London Olympics. This keeps the traffic on your blog without the reader surfing onto another website (say wikipedia or google) to find out more information about the topic you are talking about. This also makes the readers more aware of the other topics you have written about in the past and helps increase the traffic to your older articles. This it will keep readers on your blog for much longer as well - ideally, you want them to go from one article to another, rather than just read one article and then lose interest in your blog.

Limpeh at the Olympics last year. 

Keep it a decent length.

Even if you are talking about a topic which you are passionate about, do not ramble on for too long. Do not test the attention span of your readers. An average blog post should take no more than 5 minutes to read and at a stretch, maybe 10 minutes. It should be the kind of article that your readers can read on a mobile device whilst on a train journey or on their lunch break. It shouldn't require them to set aside 30 minutes to read a lengthy piece - most readers are not that patient. It is easier to get someone to visit your blog 3 times to spend 10 minutes reading each time, then to get them to dedicate a solid block of 30 minutes to read one article.

If you still haven't said everything within those constraints, break it up into a few parts so that your post isn't going to be too long - I am going to exercise that principle now as I think this post is long enough for now but I still have plenty of say about the issue of blogging!

Akan datang: part 2!

So you follow all these points I have given you and you think you're on your way to write a great blog - what can go wrong? What problems can you face? Well, in part 2, I will be sharing with you some of the more common problems faced by bloggers like myself. Some of these problems have no easy solution but in part 2, we will look at them in more details and what you can do about them. If you already have a problem that you want me to take a look at, you know the drill. As usual if you have any comments or questions about anything I have raised in this article, please feel free to leave a comment below and let's talk about it. Thanks for reading and happy blogging!