SOCIALIS Saturday: Joe Heschmeyer at Shameless Popery had a post this week titled, “Ten Tips for Successful Catholic Blogging.” Take a minute to read through it if you haven’t already, it’s an excellent post. For the weekend question, can we elaborate on this advice? We have readers who have blogs, many of our contributors have their own blogs, and perhaps there are people thinking of starting a blog. It’s a learning curve, for sure. So:
5 thoughts on “Tips for Blogging”
I suppose it depends on how you define “successful” blogging. I think the best definition is one that says “I’m spreading the truth”, but obviously people pick other goals (x number of visitors, subscribers, etc).
Based on that thought, I would elaborate on his first point, “Why do you feel called to blog?” In order to have realistic goals and expectations for your blog, it is important to know what you will define “success” as. Without really thinking about this, it can be easy to get discouraged when your blog is held to popular metrics of success which may not be a good fit for you. This segues a bit into his “figuring out your genre” point too, as some genres are naturally more popular than others (but also harder to break in to).
For example, I view my blog as more of a reference for people searching for religious sites than something most people will want to regularly follow. Because of my format (lots of traveling to be done, lots of photos that need editing), I will *never* hit more than one post a week about my travels during good months, and that’s OK. At the end of the day, my blog is by no means popular, but I have had a lot of transient visitors through searches who have been helped by my posts. And that was my goal from the start!
Jump in and do something. Write stuff, get it out there, receive feedback and work to improve. Keep it all on one topic or post on different subjects. Don’t expect to be popular immediately unless you are the guy behind Stuff White People Like or Marc Barnes/Bad Catholic. Keep plugging away, streamline as you go.
I think a blog is successful when it reaches its goal of existence. Most of my blogs are on apologetics and I think once someone Googles and find the answers s/he is searching for on my blog, my goal is achieved. Any other thing is a secondary issue.
I’ve done WAY too much research on blogging in the past 6 months. I think the number 1 tip is to read Probloggers book 31 Days to Build A Better Blog: http://www.problogger.net/31dbbb-workbook/ I read this back in October (I started my blog in June) and it helped me understand blogs and how people read blogs SO much more! Even though it’s generic it is VERY well done. If you can find a group of bloggers reading the book together it’s even better bc you can discuss it and bounce ideas off each other. That could be an idea to read this book with other catholic bloggers.
Another tip is follow #SavvyBlogging hashtag on twitter really good advice goes there and go to #Blogchat twitter chat on Sunday nights at 9pm EST. GREAT people at this chat with GREAT advice! I have learned a ton of great information from other bloggers just by attending those chats.
And lastly design. If your site is ugly people aren’t going to read it. There are tons of free templates out there. If you have the money hire a designer. There are many affordable designers out there that do EXCELLENT work. I know so many bloggers who say they wish they’d hire someone YEARS ago!
I know these ideas are “secular” but I think they can be applied to our Catholic Blogs. I really don’t think Catholic Bloggers are any different than Mommy Bloggers, Coupon Bloggers, or Educational Bloggers. We just write about different topics.
If anyone has any questions about any of these things just let me know and I can help you. You can email me at thecatholiccouponer @ gmail.com. Maybe we need to have a blogging tips series on this blog 😉
Regarding design, if the site isn’t user-friendly or easy to navigate, people will get frustrated reading it.
~Ink