I’ve now been “blogging” for about 15 years. I’m still not particularly good at it, but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this will merely serve as my digital memoirs. I won’t get rich off it, I may never write a massively successful piece, but many years after I’m gone, hopefully these bits will still exist in one form or another to allow my ancestors to better glimpse into my life.

With so much time and over 1000 postings under my belt, I’ve developed (not to be confused with “always follow”) the following best practices:

    1. Write it down. Have an idea? You will forget it. Have a place to jot any topics you feel like writing about.
    2. Write more of it down. All too often I’ll write the subject of an idea and have plenty more brilliance to expound at that moment, but forget those thoughts when I sit down to actually flesh it out days or months later.
    3. Be patient. It can be exciting to hit that publish button. Resist the urge to do so prematurely. Be sure you’re really done with all you have to say. I sit on some posts for months as I gather data and thoughts. Note: This can be overdone; my list of drafts is pretty huge, but I simply haven’t had the time or interest in giving those posts the effort they need.
    4. Be more patient. Really done writing and ready to send it out? Do it tomorrow unless time is of the essence. You will think of more only minutes after you hit publish. If your readership is few and they receive you via a feed, they will likely read it near immediately and miss those extra thoughts you had. Most often, the stuff I add after posting is some of the best writing I do. If your blogging software has it, use a publishing scheduler and set it to make the article live in 24 hours.
  2. Preview. It’s not enough to view your writing in whatever editor you use. You need to see it as your readers will as this triggers some different, better editing function in your brain (this is purely anecdotal).
  3. Repreview (yes, I just invented that word). Think you’re done? Do it again. Be sure to read every word and sentence with care. You will find more to fix or reword on this second pass.
  4. Throw things away. A surefire way to get rid of readers is to write garbage. If you’re not happy with what you wrote or don’t think anyone will find it interesting, it is okay to can it. Keep the signal to noise ratio high.
  5. Get help. If you’re not a particularly good writer, find a friend who is and ask them to edit your work. This feedback will enable you to learn and not immediately eliminate readers like me who have no patience for spelling and grammatical errors.
  6. Read what you wrote. It can be very rewarding to see your writing ability improve. Even stuff I wrote as little as five years ago seems elementary.
  7. Backup. Put a repeating calendar item in your planner for backing up your site. This doesn’t need to be a full file structure backup, but be sure to get whatever holds your text.