What makes a good blog?

So blogger has given me my posts back, though the comments seem gone forever. Enjoy...

It’s interesting how we all write differently and our blogs are so different from each other. I follow a lot of blogs and my typical blog round every two days or so is about 50 blogs. And on each blog, you see a different topic, a different style of writing, a different personality, a different story, a different life. And this is one thing that has kept me excited about blogging in my year plus of starting this blog. For me, it goes beyond having my own blog, posting my own stuff and expecting and replying to comments. As a writer who loves reading, I am inspired by the different voices and stories, it gets the wires in my head sparking – but in a good way :).

Of course, there are the similarities too. After all, we are all human and sometimes life throws the same experiences at us. For example, a lot of our student bloggers are looking forward to exams, a couple or so are looking for jobs, a similar number just got jobs, yay!, and I can remember some of months ago when a few bloggers popped out them babies. So yeah, it can sometimes seem like you’re reading the same thing over and again, especially when it comes to memes. I know I’m the chief culprit at that, 25 Question Tag anyone? Lol…

Now to the topic of this post; what makes a good a good blog is being able to stand out. It is imperative in this milieu of different and similar voices that a blogger strikes that note of uniqueness. For those of us that love blogging, that love people reading our posts, and love those comments, the truth is that if your blog does not stand out, your visitors may not return. I know there are a few bloggers who even though their blogs are not marked private would prefer it to be as undiscoverable as possible; I’m not talking about those. I’m referring to some people that get one comment per post, and wish it were five. Or look at their 10 followers and wish it were 100. What do you do? You need a good blog, a blog that stands out.

But how do you make your blog stand out you ask? By being yourself. Yes, you can look at what other popular bloggers are doing, and try to note some things to try. But don’t try to write like them, and even worse, never copy their work! That’s plagiarism, especially if you do not attribute it. If you do not have time to write a post, leave it, it’s not that serious. If you try to post everyday because the other person is doing it, you may end up burnt out. However, if you have it in you to post three times a day, go for it, just make sure there are some ads on your blog to at least buy pure water, :)

I’ll stop here for now. This is just a preamble, I’ll be writing more blogging tips and tricks in the coming weeks. Leave a comment or question and I might mention it in the next one.