Signs of the Upcoming Blogamageddon and 20 Things Every Blogger Should Know to Prevent It *

1. People judge a book by its cover. Titles are very important.
2. Blogging about blogging is like masturbation**.
   • Everybody does it, but only a select few obsessively think about it all the time.
   • But they’re the ones who sit beside you on the bus.
3. Blogging takes more time then you might think. Seriously consider collaboratively working with partners.
   • Inferior, weak-willed partners whose posts you can edit and change with no fear of retaliation, because they know that you have the kahuna’s to release those pictures from that tequila-ridden time with the llamas. Pictures that should never have been taken.
   • 
   • Yes, I am talking to you Robert Scoble.
4. People won’t dig through old posts unless you are writing a blog about your experience as a London call girl. Present your content in a way that it is easy for new readers to find the older posts they might find interesting.
5. Categories are how you logically organize posts. It’s like having different drawers for white socks, black socks, and women’s lacy underwear. Each post should have one category.
6. Tagging is an essential way to add semantic information to help people find similar posts. They aren’t the same as categories, although you can use the same tools to do both. Each post should have multiple tags.
   • Tagging is like putting a Post-It note on your favorite socks to remind you that they have pictures of Superman, so that you’d be able to find them if you couldn’t see the sock but you could still see the Post-It.
   • That’s a really bad analogy.
7. There is someone out there writing about the exact same subject. Find a way to keep your posts interesting.
   • If that means transcribing your blog into a word balloons above naked pictures of Yasmine Bleeth cavorting with Kermit the Frog then who am I to judge?
8. A picture is worth a thousand words.
   • Especially if it involves naked Yasmine Bleeth cavorting with Kermit the Frog.
9. Cut out the chaff. Less is more. This list should have stopped at #6.
10. Re-read the damn think. Copy editing is a full time job.
    • If you don’t know the difference between your/you’re/there/their/they’re and you can’t type out ‘you’ or ‘for’ as full words, then maybe you should stick to putting revealing pictures of yourself on the Internet and give this whole ‘blogging’ thing a pass.
    • Especially if you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
11. Getting dugg, redd, scaped or slashdotted won’t drastically increase your audience. Don’t be a one hit wonder.
    • When was the last time you listened to U Can’t Touch This?
12. Or maybe one popular post is a big enough gateway for you to pick up regular readers and get the whole shebang on the road..
13. Do search engine optimization to help people find (your) relevant content, not to increase your page views. It’s a sad day indeed when the only hits are from Google spiders and your mom.
14. Using WordPress (especially wordpress.com) will drastically increase your ranking in search results. It’s Magic with a capital M.
15. Page views, unique visitors, inbound links, page rank, number of comments and Technorati ranking have as much meaning as you give them. Stats are addictive, but they come second to having fun.
    • Give up SiteMeter and switch to heroin. At least proper drug addiction has support groups. Who is going to listen to you whine about how you got fired for looking at your page views every minute of every day instead of working? No one.
16. Pick a subject, and stick with it. The only person interested in every random thought going through your head is your mother (and even then she’s faking it).
17. Commenting on another person’s blog is a good way to get their attention.
    • Sending them illicit pictures of yourself dressed up as a Teletubby covered with whip cream and licorice is a better way.
18. Keep a list of everyone who ever says something disparaging about you. When you reach the Technorati Top 100 you can look down from green leafy nirvana and mock them as nubile slaves feed you succulent grapes.
19. The Internet is full of cats. One more won’t hurt.
20. Not only is ignoring your super-hot girlfriend while writing blog entries a bad idea, it’s liable to get you castrated in your sleep. She baked you cookies for ******’s sake. Stop reading this and go pay attention to her.

* Yeah, the title wasn’t an accurate representation of the article. It got you to read it though, dinnit? Actually, blogging as we know it is on the cusp of great change.

** I might be doing it, but you’re the one who’s still reading it.

Inspired by problogger.net List Group Writing Project.

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• Understanding Tagging Folksonomy – How it Relates to Improving PageRank

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