Simple blogging: focus on what matters

Blogging, blogging, blogging. Nowadays, it seems like everybody blogs. It should be simple then, shouldn’t it? Well, somehow most blogs die after a post or two…

What’s the matter? Well, it could be that people focus on their blog rather than on the blogging!

Most wannabe bloggers start by looking for a platform. They check out dozens of them. Once they settle on a particular platform, the tuning starts. Trying tons of shiny themes, installing billions of plugins and widgets… After a while, they finally write the legendary “Hello World” post. Sometimes, a second post gets published as well.

Isn’t this Blogging? No!

Blogging is about writing, not about outlook. The value of a blog is in its content. Visitors rarely come to look at a nice theme, seen in thousands of other blogs. However, they will stick to good content as bees to honey.

A good blog should be started way before a Blogger account is created. Since its heart is content, the first job should be to make Content. Just imagine that the blog already exists. Now, try to write few posts. By “post” I mean a real, long post, not some ‘Hello World’ quickie. That would let you feel the real blogging spirit.

Writing-before-launching helps to prevent many common problems in the field. First of all, it would let you make sure that you can write and enjoy it. Furthermore, you can test yourself if you have anything to say on a chosen topic. There’s nothing worse than running out of ideas after a few articles. Also, it will help you to post regularly from the start.

So, now you have a blog with a few nice posts and a dozen (or even more if you’re lucky) readers. What’s the next step? More good posts, some backlinks. It is more important what the next step should NOT be. One of the worst things that can happen to a blogger is the “Shiny-Thing” syndrome. Some people get into theming and installing widgets so much, that they literally don’t have time for actual blogging.

The best way to stay away from upgrading your blog to chaos is to have an unupgradeable blog! All those widgets and themes look so compelling, don’t they? But, hey, if it’s impossible to install them, you won’t even try. All while having much more time for actual blogging.

That’s why I love ultra simple weblog platforms like Posterous and Tubmlr. They simply won’t allow you to get distracted by shinyware. On the other hand, simple blogging tools give you all features that you’d ever really need – attaching media, accepting comments, gathering statistics and, well, writing.

Sometimes you may feel a little bit limited with such a small feature set. But in virtually all cases you won’t need anything else. If known companies and brands can use those platforms, so can you.

Get writing and enjoy real blogging!