10 Tips for Blogging Success: Guaranteed
How to Make a Big Splash with your Blog and Impress the Hell out of Everyone: All Hail to the Power of Zen …
Warning: This post belongs to the Bloke’s ‘Just for Fun Series’, so if you have no sense of humor then please refrain from reading any further.
Rory has written an interesting post about recent newcomer Leo Babauta who has quickly made a name for himself in the overcrowded blog about blogging niche, leaving bloggers shaking their heads how he did it.
So I thought it would be fun if I wrote a tongue-in-cheek counterpoint to help dispel any speculation and give you my insight as to how he might have done it.
These are my observations in a nutshell:
- Make a HUGE splashy banner. Be bold. Be very BOLD. Later, when your blog is more established you can replace the big banner with even splashier advertisements.
- Write in very (very) LARGE print. Did I say LARGE? The advantage with this strategy is that you can fill up the page with less words. This takes the “less is more” writing strategy to the nth level. In addition, the sight impaired need not have to use their scroll button to make the print larger. How thoughtful.
- Speaking of writing, be sure to throw in an impressive buzz word now and then to keep them guessing and running over to Wikipedia. Who knows, while they’re over there they might write an article about you and make you immortal.
- Stuff your titles with outrageous superlatives that are sure to attract swarms of readers like flies on doo doo. Words like “Superblog” or “Pure Gold“… be sure to keep your thesaurus handy and remember that BOLD thing.
- Use a simple template/theme design. Some call this the “uncluttered” look. The advantage with this strategy is that it takes zero talent or knowledge to create your template and only a few minutes of your time. Who cares if it looks like it was made using Microsoft Word.
- This strategy will only be effective if you tell everyone else they should do the same to hide the fact that you have no coding skills whatsoever. Later on when your blog gets more popular you will have lots of white space to clutter up your design with nice, blinking advertisements.
- Only allow the cheering section to leave comments. Forget about blogging transparency and delete with extreme prejudice any comments that might offer a different opinion … especially if it comes from the competition. (I know this from bitter personal experience).
- Glean the best information you can find from the internet. Apply CMP (Copy, Massage and Paste). Repackage it with all the flair you can muster using your best copywriting skills then pass it off as your own content. Who cares about plagiarism. Doesn’t everybody do it?
- Prepare a bunch of posts in advance and orchestrate your big splash by scheduling them for release one right after the other. That outta impress them.
- Now sit back, have a beer and watch your traffic go through the roof. Laugh your way all the way to the bank.
Disclaimer: Any similarity to bloggers living or dead is purely coincidental.
P.s.: This post was made in fun. Please note the tags “humor“ and “satire“. Get it? So don’t bother sending me hate mail. You will have to stand in line for that.
*This post has been recently updated
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This so true and I can’t stop laughing! Right on the money bloke.
I can feel the power, Instabloke!
I’m both a BlokeFan and a ZenFan, and this post made me giggle.
Don’t worry, I’m sure when Leo reads this, he’ll smile, too.
After all, the first link you included was quite complimentary, and the second was a rant against those who do exactly the opposite of what he does.
Leo has shown such a great sense of humor in the past.
I remember reading a rant at another site that *was* mean-spirited. Leo commented on the thread with such panache.
(Have you seen it? Here it is with no hotlink: http://apodion.net/apo/gnd)
The mean-spirited post was clearly intended for a Mad Max style audience. Scroll down and see how Leo walked calmly (Zen-like) into that den of creeps and handled himself. He’s a class act.
For sure he isn’t the type to engage in some flaming war with a parody like yours, prefaced with disclaimers, written with a wink and a twinkling eye.
Doesn’t the management of Time magazine smile when MAD makes a parody of it?
What… me worry
Thank you for your great advice! I’m off to make my entire blog bolder! After that I’m going to increase my font size because that’s a good idea you had about it filling in space. Now I won’t have to write as much. (I just love satire!)
LOL, Oh I love it! I’m subscribing so I can have coffee with you in the morning!
Oh how funny!! All this time I thought it was the two sidebar thing that made you popular but it’s the large font thing!!
Okay, off to redesign my blog again. Should I make the sidebar fonts big too or is that a special tool just for posts?
Very funny. I love your sarcasticly witty sense of humour.
Thank you Jo and Christy. I’ll try not to disappoint.
The nice thing about satire is you can speak the truth and have a chuckle at the same time. And who better to parody than the self-appointed gurus. I’m happy that you liked it.
Ok so I had to come back to re-read this because I thought I had a sense of humour. I’m grinning but I’m not laughing.
Perhaps I need to read the Rory’s article but the link to the website you posted is suspended and I can’t find a ‘copy’ ! Oh well good-riddance.
Leo Babauta is the author of Zen Habits right ? I used to be subscribed to him but the more I read, the more depressed I got !
I’m not the type of guy who can stick to a habit and live on it for the rest of my life. I like spontaneity even within plans I make.
See you around.
Unfortunately the link has gone stale. But if you’ve read the blog then you should know what I’m talking about. Satire doesn’t work for everybody and is probably the most difficult of all to write. Satire is also an effective learning tool if you can get your head around the tongue-in-cheek. You should try it some time.
Blog Bloke reply on August 30th, 2008 7:48 pm:
Dec 30th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
[…] was also very revealing when he said he didn’t like my parody of his friends. Reading between the lines this was not a case of my being too “negative“, but rather […]