Blogging Tips

Take this quick quiz to find out whether you’re committed to your blog…or whether you should just plain BE committed.

1. You tried a weird breakfast cereal this morning, way different from your normal breakfast. You:

A) Write a long post about it when you get to work, though your blog isn’t generally food-oriented. But see, this cereal had super weird flakes that got stuck in your throat. People need to know.

B) Post an analogy between the weird cereal flakes getting stuck in your throat and the troops that are still stuck in Iraq. You came up with the idea on the way to the office and it sounded kind of funny at the time.

C) Go straight to work. What kind of a freak blogs about breakfast cereal?

2. Your little sister just got dumped by her boyfriend, and she’s been shopping like a fiend to make herself feel better. You:

A) Spend a lot of time with her in real life, and say nice unrelated stuff about her on your blog to try and cheer her up and distract her from the shopping.

B) Forget maintaining the blog. Your sister is in pain, and that’s more important.

C) Blog about the breakup in detail. There’s a lot of interesting material here. Plus, you can use the brand names of all the stuff she’s buying as SEO terms to bring in traffic.

3. Your best friend hooked up with a girl while you were on a road trip together and you blogged it. Now he’s worried his girlfriend will find your blog, so he asks you to take down the post. Your reaction?

A) Bros before blogs, dude. If his girlfriend finds the blog and sees you didn’t post about your trip, she might be suspicious – you delete the whole blog just to be safe.

B) If that moron wants to go around hooking up with half of Florida, he’s going to have to deal with the consequences. The post was too good to delete: it stays.

C) He’s your friend, and you have to respect his privacy. You make the post into a draft for now. You can always change the facts around and re-post it in a few months, pretending it’s an anecdote about a different trip.

Score yourself:
1. A: 3 B: 2 C: 1
2. A: 2 B: 1 C: 3
3. A: 1 B: 3 C: 2

3-4: Dilettante
You don’t seem very committed to this blog of yours. It’s perfectly healthy to put work and friends above blogging, but it leaves your blog whimpering for attention. Why not ditch the “personal diary” style of blogging and start writing on a specific impersonal subject? Writing about a hobby or interest won’t invade anyone’s privacy and might help you become more comfortable with the blogging format.

5-7: Regular Joe
You’re maintaining a nice balance between living your life and writing about it. The fact that you’re committed to posting regularly without stepping on anyone’s toes suggests that you might be ready to take your blogging to a professional level, applying for paid blogging gigs. Taking yourself seriously as a writer is the first step, so good job.

8-9: Maniac
Your blog doesn’t cook Thanksgiving dinner for you, give you a paycheck or get you drunk after a tough breakup. So why are you giving it all your love? A strong investment in your work is great, but remember that you’re writing about real people when you post your thoughts. Do yourself and your friends a favor: create a supplement to the blog that can be a little more private. Keep a personal diary where you can put the private stuff, or save it for emails to close friends if you feel compelled to share.