It’s great to plan out and focus on what you want for your blog’s content, but have you thought about what you will not allow on your blog? It can be quite helpful. One thing I’ve learned from project management is that when defining the scope of a project, you need to specify what the project and product will do, but if you don’t also specify what you will not allow, then you open yourself up to what’s known as scope creep, where, little by little, things get out of hand.
So here is my “anti-top-ten” list:
- Posts that are all blockquote + link and no original content
- The same echo chamber news announcements everyone else is posting, like WordPress upgrades and so forth. It’s not that WordPress upgrades aren’t important. It’s that you already know about them or are far more likely to get that news elsewhere (like, um… your WordPress dashboard).
- Pictures of Scarlett Johannsson (had to really fight with myself about that one). Okay, as you can see, you will encounter silly, lame jokes once in a while!
- Posts on subjects about which I know nothing and I’m trying to B.S. my way through.
- Google AdSense ads, because I make my money selling blog consulting services and custom WordPress themes, and that pays better than AdSense.
- Pointless, distracting widgets (everyone’s got their opinion on what’s worth having–I want to keep my Technorati widget because my authority number is so awesome that I love to show it off).
- Rambling, train-of-thought writing that doesn’t have a single main point to communicate.
- Scraped or stolen content. To me that’s kind of a “no duh,” but I believe in stating the obvious, because you never know who doesn’t know.
- Affiliate links to products I’ve never used or tried personally.
- A giant, meaningless, awful header image. I like to use graphics, but I don’t like header images that are so big you have to scroll down to read anything of value, don’t communicate what the blog is about (or worse, miscommunicate it unintentionally!), or that are just plain ugly (a subjective judgment, I know).
Okay, I lied about the Scarlett Johannsson pictures. But just this once.
Technorati Tags: top10, blogging, blogtips, bloggingtips
Is quite interesting trying to avoid “scope creep”, something I am guilty of. I know a bunch of my readers blog for the joy of blogging, and don’t monetise their site or use it as a platform to sell themselves (ironically one of them has found a job as a problogger, just not through his main blog).
The one thing I will not do is paid posts. Certainly on my main blog. I just do not see the point in them except to increase google juice (and even then the pages are usually PR0, and have no value). Plus I find it difficult writing about something I’m not interested in!
Thanks for commenting, Rhys. The great thing about blogging is the immense variety in it. There’s plenty of room for anybody doing whatever they like. There’s no reason to write about something you’re not interested in. There is a reason to do paid posts, of course, and it’s to get paid!
But there’s a line to walk with that. If you’ll write anything just for money, your blog will quickly lose readers. I’ve written the odd paid post here, but only for something that matches the topics my blog covers.
I enjoy reading this post … especially the girl photo and the joke:) Lucky there is no much controversy things like “no modified blog post”, or mention the word sh*t, s*x and etc. Or stay away from politic topic, you might get throw into jail for that:)
Yeah, I don’t swear hardly ever on this blog, but there have been things that others have written that I’ve linked to that have more adult language. I don’t have a thing against it but it’s not my personal style. I’m glad you liked my little joke.
Scarlett Johannsson is only half the battle … it’s important for bloggers to refrain from posting pics of Keira Knightley also
LOL, for a moment, seeing that pic of Scarlett like that on my blog, I had this insane idea of just posting a big picture of an extraordinarily beautiful woman with every post, regardless of the post’s subject, like how Maki does with his cute little anime pics. But I held on tight, and the moment passed…