Newbie Blogger Initiative - Blogging Tips from Navi's lips

Well really, it's blogging tips from Navi's keyboard...

I don't know who started this thing, but I have been reading a lot of people giving tips to new bloggers, and though I do agree with most of the things they say, there are some things I would like to say if you're new to blogging, or perhaps trying to be more read.

You want to write?  Just write!

All of my favourite bloggers, write because they want to write.  I find that writing for an audience takes the spontaneity out of my writing, and really, people come to hear your voice, your take on things.  I started my blog as a diary of sorts, to keep all those jumbled thoughts in some sort of order, so my fading old age memory can look back at what I've written and said "Oh yes, I remember that!  Thank goodness I wrote that down!"  Sometimes, I feel a bit funny when people put polls on their blogs about what they should write more of, asking what their readers want to see more of, because really, if you're a true reader, you want to see more of EVERYTHING that they write.  However, this is only my opinion - I'm not canning any of those people that do put those polls, I just think that you don't really need them!

Why doesn't anyone visit me?  Or read my blog?

My good friend Tome of the Ancient and I tried the "sex sells" as part of our post titles one time, to see if this experiment would increase our pageviews.  Sadly (perhaps, I mean gladly) it did nothing for my pageviews, but I think it did something for Ancient's.  But I did learn one thing - your blog post title should include interesting words if you want it to be hit by search engines.  So phrase your post titles carefully.  If I want my post to get a lot of traffic from search engines, make sure you include those words you want associated with it in the title.  My post about Healing Heroic Yor'sahj with a Resto Druid is a great example.  It is the number one searched thing on my blog from Google, with the words Resto+druid+Yor'sahj being the most searched items, bringing them straight here to my blog.  Of course, being listed with blogger, a google product, helps that too.

See a hot topic in the blogosphere?  Jump in and add your voice!  People love to hear different points of view, and if the topic is a particularly interesting one, you will bet there will people coming out of the woodwork to see what everyone is talking about.

Another thing is that if nobody knows you're there, nobody will come and see you.  Do you have a favourite blog that you visit?  Leave a comment!  Though if you want big time attention, leave a comment on a very POPULAR post, but it has to be a deep and meaningful comment.  People will read it and then click on your name and go see what other exciting things you have to say.

Oh, and join a community.  Blog Azeroth is a blogging community for World of Warcraft bloggers.  Other games or topics may have similar type communities.  So get into the community and people will know you're there.

How often should I write?

Simple.  As much or as little as you want.  Never apologise for the lack, or the abundance, of your posts.  I don't write when I have nothing to say, because you lose focus and people will get bored.  But.. I have a daily blog, or so it says in the title, and I feel like I do have a lot to say so I keep writing.  One of the things is, that I like to separate my thoughts when I'm posting.  Say today in World of Warcraft I was raiding, but then after that I was questing and I saw some rares, and then I also made a new transmog set... I have to separate them into a raiding post, a rares and questing post, and a transmog post.  Why?  Because each one of those things may appeal to different people, and if someone is searching for all the posts on "rares" for example, they don't want to have to wade through an entire post of a boss kill before they get to that rare post - they'll be skipping your writing to get to it, and you don't want that!  You want people to READ what you've written, so make it easy for them, separate it all out nicely and make it nice and organised.

Do looks really matter?

In a nutshell - Yes.  A wall of text is hardly enticing reading.  But, just a single picture punctuating that text is enough to draw the eye, capture the attention and draw the reader into your post.  Established bloggers and readers don't need to do this anymore, but I think as a new blogger, you should try to get the wow factor out there and dazzle them with some sparkling colour to draw the crowds.  Once you've established your reading base, you can drop the pictures if you like.  Or, if you're like and and Ancient and Matty, you'll just keep sticking pictures in there.  I really don't like posts with no pictures - but that's just my personal opinion again.  Hey, this is my blog, I'm entitled to my opinion :D

I think I have discovered who is keeping tabs on this NBI thing.  Yes I know I'm really late to the party, but it's never too late till unless the party's over.  And I think the party is still going.  Check out Biobreak - they've got almost 2nd daily updates about this NBI thing!  It's amazing!  I'm off to tweet this out...