When you are always intending to write something about blogs and finally get around to it, you wonder why. As a blogger, you should be able to say something positive about the practice. It is neither illegal nor immoral, we hope. The fact is that most bloggers are cranky egotists. And if you want all three of the people who read your blog to admire you for your discernment, erudition and verve, you better have something pithy to say.
But despite the breadth of bloggers on the Internet, there does not appear to be much depth. This is the five-year anniversary of this blog and we wonder what the hell it has accomplished. You end up with some of the local Liberals hating you, some thinking you might be a bit angry and a few thinking you might be right. That does not explain the readers across Canada and around the world. (The person in Qatar who reads us regularly, who are you?)
In trying to answer your own questions about blogging, you pay close attention to what you hear from readers and you also read other blogs, hoping it will be helpful. We must report that reading other blogs is an exercise in self-abuse. We freely admit there are thousands of absolutely awful blogs out there. And all of us need editing help. Mind you, a few errors are allowed but not three per line of copy.
What we cannot get over are the twits who think a blog is a tweet. While we always considered tweets of less than 140 characters as a delightful challenge, that does not mean you can use emoticons and bad spelling.
Years ago, when we were teaching neophyte politicians how to handle television interviews, we would put them on a cable show. You would point at the camera and tell them “When that red light comes on you are going to be talking to 12 people who have tuned in by accident. You are going to capture their interest and tell them something so important so that they will forget to change channels.” And welcome to the modern version of a cable show: blogging.
That is why we always tell bloggers “Look stupid, your doting aunt cares about you and that is why you start a letter to her with ‘I.’ Nobody else gives a damn.” When you are talking to a blog audience, you tell them what you are going to tell them about. And you better make it interesting.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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