(31DBBB) Wherein I analyze a successful blog for pointers

The ProBlogger 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge is already making me rethink how I approach this blog. The task for Day #4 is to select a successful blog in my "niche" and analyze it to find out what makes it work. This is harder than it sounds! I read blogs every day, so picking a successful blog to investigate should be easy. But the flipside of reading a lot of blogs is I can't pick one "favorite". My left sidebar has an ever-growing list of blogs I find interesting and/or useful. My Firefox bookmarks folders are loaded with even more blogs.

It's simplistic to just say "I want to be the next Instapundit" because what he does is unique. I'm more of an indepth kind of guy anyhow. A newly recent favorite blogger is Robert Stacy McCain. He's a prolific writer who gets a lot of hits and attention, and he's interesting to boot. He's also apparently doing this for a living. I have a day job and I'd like to keep it. But I think I can still learn a thing or 3 from him.

A guy who definitely has a day job but still manages to write a great blog is Donald Douglas. He's always timely, topical, and insightful. He mixes things up, an indepth analysis of how conservatives can reshape the GOP was followed by topless pics of Miss Rhode Island and a jibe at the idiocy of Janeane Garofalo.

He does share one trait with Stacy McCain, as does another recent favorite, Lance at TrogloPundit, and it's something that when I realized it gave me one of those apocryphal "ah ha!" moments you always read about. They approach blogging in a way that I don't and I think that's why their blogs are better than mine.

They may write about serious stuff, but they don't always take themselves too seriously.

I know that I can be intense. It goes back to why I started blogging; I was too intense for my friends so I turned to an online outlet. I have now realized that the market for the angry old grumpy conservative guy appears to be as small online as it is in my neighborhood.

I gotta lighten up! Not just on Sundays but every day. My opinions are important to me but the successful bloggers preach less and discuss more. They link to other bloggers and engage in conversations instead of writing stand-alone op-eds. The dialog is as important as the issue being discussed. And hence, "ah ha!" moment #2.

I'm going to try to be less preachy. That's going to be hard for me, I've been pontificating since I learned to talk. There's more to this blogging thing than publishing my thoughts and waiting for the readers to applaud my sagacity. Maybe that's obvious to some (all?) of you, but there are times when I can be pretty slow on the uptake.

Posted at 16:00 by Chris Wysocki   [/misc]   Comments | Perm Link |   |   Tweet