Followers

Tuesday 7 May 2013

WordPress Daily Prompt: Key Takeaway

Give your newer brothers and sisters in WordPress one piece of advice based on your experiences blogging. If you're a new blogger, what's one question you'd like to ask other bloggers?



Blue fronted Amazon parrot


This is my favourite parrot, he used to live at the vets where I take my cats if they have problems, but now enjoys retirement in an animal home suited to his requirements in old age. He was a good subject for a few photos while I was waiting for the vet.

 Parrots just plapper what we tell them to, but blogging has to come from your inner self. Now that sounds clever, but my inner self is sometimes occupied with what to cook for dinner, or whether I should do the ironing before I sit down to write a blog. I also do not have someone to tell me what I should write, so it is I, me and myself when I sit at the computer.

When I read the theme, my first thought was “Oh dear, now I am really almost lost for words”, which does not happen very often to me (according to Mr. Swiss). I also saw the words “brothers and sisters” confusing for me, as I am a only child. Mum and Dad gave up after I arrived for some unknown reason.

Every day I learn something new. My general blogging experience today is based on daily or weekly prompts. These only arrive in my latitude in the early afternoon, not really leaving me a lot of time to think things over. I just sit and write, as now, not usually knowing where I am going.

So here is some blogging advice. It is not only about you. If you are writing a blog then make it interesting, but remember no-one is really interested in what you had for dinner, or whether you have a headache. They read it and continue to the next blog. Do not write in capital letters if you want to emphasise your point. This disturbs me most of all and I have the feeling that someone is trying to tell me what an idiot I am. Respect your viewers above all. Doesn’t this sound wonderful, I must be perfect.

I have a little routine. After I have uploaded my daily prompt blog, I visit the other blogs. Might click a “like” or not, according to how I find it, but I do read what you have written. I might look in again later in the day, and definitely in the morning when I am smothering my computer with splashes of milk and tea stains from my breakfast to see what has happened in the night. You can learn from the others and you can also learn from how they react to your blog. You are not alone in the blogging world and have not invented blogging.

Some people seem to be gifted with brilliant ideas. I often read a blog and admire the point of view or way of explaining. Read other people’s blogs. I always do. You can learn a lot from them. For me it goes without saying. If I put effort and time into my blog, then it is certain that others do as well. There is nothing more boring than to see a blog full of youTube collections with almost no writing material in between. These are the blogs I do not spend a long time in reading. I might blog with a youTube video, but that is not very often, and it is usually a clip from a local Swiss band, people who I know, or to illustrate what I am talking about: definitely not to show my favourite songs.  My music taste is not everyone’s taste and your taste may also not be mine.

I spike my blogs with humour sometimes, but I am aware that my humour is not for everyone, so just cross my typing fingers and hope. I read my blog through after I have written it (usually in “Word”) and often make corrections or alter the text. Whether your English is perfect or not is not so important. Mine definitely is not, after so many years living in another country. What you write should be clear. Perhaps shorter sentences if English is not your mother tongue.

There you see it again, I start writing a blog, short and sweet, and it develops into a long winded marathon on “How to Blog according to me”. In the meanwhile my blind cat, who is sitting next to me on the porch, has decided that life is boring when I am blogging and meowed telling me to move and take him inside where a bowl of vitamin enriched feline pellets is waiting for him and some fresh water.

Happy blogging everyone and if you delete this from your computer wondering what she is rabbiting on about, I will understand completely. 

2 comments:

  1. I keep telling myself I really should get back to writing more, like I used to in Y360 and the early days of Multiply, but I never seem to have the time.

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    1. One of the reasons why I have now reduced my blogging sites. I was in Muzenews for a couple of months, found it a flop in my eyes and have now left forever. Blogger is just a backup with a couple of interesting sites and some good friends and Wordpress is for me. I really do not need more.

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