Path of The Problogger – Content

This is the second episode of my slow series documenting the path of the problogger through my personal views. The first was about monetizing your blog via Google’s Adsense that you can find via Path of The Problogger – Adsense. As much as everyone wants to make ‘easy money’ via their blogs, the other part that powers the engine of the blog is the content.

In this chapter, I realize that content is a really general topic to be discussing on but because my power of copy isn’t as great as some, I decided to cover things like scheduled blogging, good content, original content, copy-n-paste content and others that come to my mind later.

Alright, so you’ve started a blog or already a blog owner and you’ve found methods to take full advantage with full control of your Adsense. The next big step in becoming a problogger to me is the content you’re able to provide to your readers.

You don’t really have to have the perfect English for blogging but having lessen the typos and picking up some decent grammer is always a good practice while blogging. After all, we want to be looked at as a professional in our field and not someone who types so fast they lose track of they are typing.

Scheduled Blogging
Nope, I ain’t refering to the feature bundled in MovableType 3.2. (though it doesn’t work properly) Did you know that some probloggers run a really tight schedule for blogging? Some probloggers have even taken their scheduling a step further by analyzing their site visit statistics. They try very hard to understand the reading patterns of their readers. Once they’ve roughly found out the time most visitors are present in their blog, they fire a new post up.

Other than finding out the best time, some probloggers maintain a strict blogging schedule. They’ve made it their discipline to post minimum 3 posts a day or 50 posts a week or something like that. The discipline these bloggers are driven by not only money but passion for some.

Good Content
This is all about the typos, grammar, proverbs, adverbs and whatever English thingies we might’ve learn since kindergarten or primary. Bloggers with almost a perfect command in English have very entertaining blogs. It isn’t because their grammar is perfect but because they are able to phrase things in a very concise manner at times. While some people rant a paragraph long, all they might need is a sentence. Yes, I know, scary.

There isn’t a crash course method to learn this but you get the hang or feel of it in the long run. I’ve seen some bloggers who’ve had bad grammer in English improving on a stable flow ever since they started blogging. Another method of learning is by reading posts by bloggers with decent command in English, bloggers like this I dare say are Minishorts, Darren, Nick Usborne (copywriter) and others.

Original or Copy-n-Paste (CnP)
I dare say that even original content from bloggers posting on a personal note are actually copying others. Even I do too and this arises when a hot topic is beaming from blogger to blogger. The more famous topics are of political agendas, lastest news, conspiracies and gadgets. Every blogger wishes to get into the action of something and they’re lost their drive of posting personal original words from their own heart. It’s like they’re trying to so hard to rant but still keeping it inside themselves.

The CnP bloggers are authors in their own right but to me, I feel they aren’t the least bit professional as a blogger. As we know, the weblog is to share your personal word on something. So if you did a lot of CnP and had no view of it on your own, how can you qualify yourself as a problogger when you’re not really even blogging? You’re merely just updating the public and not sharing your word.

Blogging Style
Google is really a good friend of mine to help me find links like; Inside Baseball on Business Blogging – Blogging Styles. The author; Jim Logan, has categorized the blogging styles according to baseball groups. It’s really interesting reading his categorization of Cheerleaders, Player and Commentator.

I feel that majority of our existing local styles are a real ‘rojak’. (mixed fruit snack) We’re neither the cucumber nor the crunchy bits mixed along with the sweet sauce. We all want to be the final product that is later consumed. The reason why most bloggers are that way? We are all just plain lazy. If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d be busy finding my style and make my posts more interesting by now.

Priorities / Updates
When you want to make a statement or make a particular thing shout out from the paragraph what do you do? You will use the bold, make the text larger or highlight the particular phrase. Those are definetely the right methods for emphasizing but never combine all. Like annoying fully typed phrases in capital letters, this kind of methods might annoy the readers.

So that concludes the second episode of path of the problogger series. Maybe the next episode I’ll touch on blog design and hope I won’t make it too long. Anyone want to make any suggestion what they’d like to see discuss on the blog design episode?