1 Blogging Effectiveness

(or how to blog effectively)

This is here to summarize

• "The 10 Habits of Highly Annoying Bloggers"

• "7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers"

• "7 Habits of An Anti-Blogger"

in one convenient place.

And to link to similar/related sites that summarize good blogging knowledge such as:

• "Connie's 15 Commandments"

• "10 Things Venomous Kate Learned About Blogging"

• "anything but ordinary's summary" of "dkeithrobinson's a successful blog"

1.1 The 10 Habits of Highly Annoying Bloggers

I first mentioned "The 10 Habits of Highly Annoying Bloggers" in an blog entry about an update to my about me section. Without further ado, here they are, quoted verbatim (sans original hyperlinks):

1. Bloggers who don't enable comments on their blogs.

2. Bloggers who rarely produce original content, instead simply aggregating links to other blogs that I already read.

3. Bloggers who spend more time blogging about blogging than anything else.

4. Bloggers who are FontBitches and don't care.

5. Bloggers who don't provide any "about me" info on their blog, or pointers to it elsewhere on their site. I like to know more about the people I'm reading.

6. Bloggers who don't provide a blogroll.

7. Bloggers who post excuses for not posting. I don't care if you're busy today. If you're not posting, fine. I'll just assume you had other things to do.

8. Bloggers who react but rarely act. Commenting on what other people say or do is interesting, but I'm annoyed by folks who never seem to have original material. (Yes, this is like #2 but it's not quite the same.)

9. Bloggers who don't provide obvious RSS links for their blog. Yes, I know that RSS auto-discovery is great, but not all tools do it.

10. Bloggers who have TrackBack but don't use it.

1.2 (The) 7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers

I first heard about this at by searching Roogle, I think. But the habits were listed spanning several blog entries, so I'm using some more editorial power here and trying to compress them into one nice concise listing:

1. Be Proactive

2. Begin With The End In Mind

3. Put First Things First

4. Think Win / Win

5. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

6. Synergize

7. Sharpen the Saw

1.2.1 Comments

Selected interstitial comments that were given about the above 7 Habits:

• From Personal to Public

• Each Blogger is Really Four

1.3 (The) 7 Habits of an AntiBlogger

Found originally at http://internetalchemy.org/2003/04/7HabitsOfAnAntiBlogger.html

• Think before posting

• Write for tomorrow

• Google is a means not an end

• Traffic isn't everything

• Write clean, valid markup

• Add value, not links

• Memes don't need your help

1.4 The 15 Commandments

This is presumably intended to be slightly humorous so I won't put the entire text of it here, just a link to it: http://connie.blog-city.com/readblog.cfm?BID=81175

1.5 (The) 10 Things Venomous Kate Learned About Blogging

Originally found at http://www.electricvenom.com/oldvenom/003348.php

There's a lot more there, but there are the main points.

10. You'll hear time and again that the blogosphere is like high school, and don't doubt it for one minute.

9. Don't spend time fretting over whether something is "blog worthy."

8. At the same time, give some thought to how wide of an appeal you want your blog to have and then accept the choice you've made.

7. Early on, you will need to decide whether you blog to change peoples' opinions or just to express your own.

6. Make it easy for readers to come to your blog.

5. Don't try to make a name for yourself by bitching about the bigger bloggers.

4. Update often, and if you can't do it frequently then at least keep something that resembles a regular schedule.

3. If you want to promote your blog, be willing to promote other blogs, and never make the mistake of thinking that outgoing links are lost traffic.

2. Don't delude yourself into believing that you and your "blog persona" are separate entities.

1. If it's not fun, don't do it.

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Also see posts on my blog where I mention this page.