How to Blog the Wrong Way

The number of blogs on the Internet has been growing at an exponential rate. When you visit enough of these journal-style websites, however, it quickly becomes clear that there's a wrong way and a right away to "do" them. Learn how to do blogs right by learning how to do them wrong.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Blog
• Web browser

1. Choose a style for your blog's design that makes it difficult or impossible to read the text. Transgressions against ease of reading include font sizes that are too small for main text (generally, anything less than 11 points), font sizes that are too big for main text (generally, anything larger than 16 points), text that's too dense (paragraphs that are so close together that they look like one long monster paragraph, or the absence of any paragraph structure to begin with), and incompatible color values for text and backgrounds (for example, anything that decreases contrast, such as dark gray text on a black background or light gray text on a white background).

2. Select a theme that is so busy, the readers' eyes will involuntarily cross after just a few seconds. Offenders range from too many style choices on one page (for example, four or more font families competing with each other) to too many types of advertisements in the main and sidebar content areas (Amazon forms here, contextual links there and Google ads everywhere else).

3. Include every widget you can find and integrate them on every page of your blog. This will cause the site to load so slowly that readers will fall asleep waiting for the content to appear or more likely, just go away and never return.

4. Refuse to make links highly visible or don't bother including any at all. The Internet is all about clicking from place to place, not to mention consuming information. These facts are how the terms "surf the Web," "Web surfer/surfing," and "Information Superhighway" came into existence. Blog posts that don't contain easily identifiable links or any links at all miss out on the opportunity to increase reader satisfaction by helping visitors access more of what they're interested in knowing. Unhappy visitors eventually mean no visitors whatsoever.

5. Write about things that nobody cares about besides you. Blogs are by definition meant to share information with others. That's why most are public and arranged in such a way as to make finding content of interest as easy as possible (thus the organization by date and categories, for instance). If you must write at length about your life alone at least try to highlight details that are universal to attract like-minded readers.

6. Adopt the attitude that nobody matters but you. hat you say goes, and if no one else likes it, then so what? If that's your approach to the world, then a traditional paper journal is a better option than a blog.

7. Neglect or refuse to respond to commenters. Once again, blogs are about sharing, which often involves some type of communication. With blogs, that interaction takes the form of comments. Ignoring individuals who comment is just as rude as walking right past someone who speaks to you on the street. It's also one of the easiest ways to ensure that soon nobody will bother reading your blog since you seem to have no gratitude for them doing so.

Tips & Warnings

• The best, most successful bloggers not only crave an audience, but they excel at making that audience feel appreciated by not doing anything to turn them off or away.