Category: Blogging

Blogging insights # 13 -Ideally how long should a blog post be?

Dr. Tanya asks;

Short-form VS Long-form Content

How long are your blog posts on average?

I am a short post writer. I cannot write very long posts. Long posts make me lose focus and I find them tedious. So on average, my posts are around 200- 300 words. If I am writing poetry, it’s even shorter.

Given the option, would you rather post long-form or short-form content?

I prefer shorter posts. I guess I am not very verbose and want to state what I want to say in fewer words. Also, I don’t want to repeat myself. Another reason maybe is that I write 4-5 posts a day. With posting so many posts, it would be plain cruelty to foist long-winded posts on my readers. It’s, I think a sure-shot way of losing the interest of your followers.

Time is short and the attention spans of social media users shorter still, why do you think the search engines prefer longer content?

I haven’t the foggiest idea! If it’s a research-based post/ content, it may be justified as people want to get as much information as possible. But otherwise, I don’t think that most people would prefer a long post.

~*~

#Keepitalive

#BloggingInsights

Some soul searching

I have been thinking!

And I have also read many posts from our blogger friends about how often one should post on the blog.

When I started to blog, I would write a post after a couple of days. This gradually increased to daily posting and then as I discovered my love of writing poetry, I increased my posts to around 4-5 a day.

Now my love of writing hasn’t lessened at all. And I do have time to write these many posts as I don’t have anything else on my plate right now.

But…….

I feel that for those who read and follow my blog, catching up on these posts has become troublesome. If I look back to the start of last year, more people used to comment and would engage with my blog. Now though there are many more people who follow my blog, the engagement level has rather fallen down instead of increasing. This has led me to the conclusion that I should decrease the number of posts per day. So from today, I will post 3-4 posts a day and after the end of January, when JusJoJan finishes, I will be doing a max of 3 posts.

I am sure this will lessen the load on the reader of those who follow my blog.

I hope I can stick to my decision and not give in to the temptation of posting too much again.

I am glad that I have reached this decision and hope that it will be more practical and easy all around, in the future.

I would be grateful for your feedback.

#Keepitalive

#Blogging

Blogging Insights # 12- Your blog in 2020

Dr. Tanya asks;

Many people are back home and at work after the winter holidays today. I am resuming the blogging insights series after a hiatus of two weeks.

Questions;

Where and how do you see your blog in 2020?

Hopefully, I will be still doing my weekly prompt and 4-5 daily posts. I hope to hit the 2000 followers mark. Other than that, I would be doing what I am already doing. Writing posts for the information and entertainment of my readers.

Are you going to make any significant changes?

I haven’t planned on doing so. But as they ( whoever THEY are) say to never say never, one doesn’t know what tomorrow will bring.

In your opinion how relevant or popular are text-based blogs (as opposed to vlogs) going to be in 2020?

In my opinion, there will always room for read-only blogs. Video and podcasts have their own place in the blogosphere but text-based blogs have a niche too. At least in the next few years that will be so. I cannot say that with technological advances, what new things will be introduced and what we will be doing in another few years. But till then, we are here.

#Keepitalive

#BloggingInsights

Blogger Recognition Award 18th December

Di of pensitivity101 has very kindly nominated for this award. Di is a brilliant blogger and writes prolifically and on a lot of topics. If you’re not already her reader, I suggest that you head over to her blog and check it out.

Willow of Willowdot21 has also nominated me for this award. Do check out her lovely blog.

Rules:

1. Thank the blogger(s) who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.

2. Write a post to show your award.

3. Give a brief story of how your blog started.

4. Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.

5. Select up to fifteen bloggers you want to give this award to.

6. Comment (or pingback) on each blog to let them know that you’ve nominated them and provide a link to the post you’ve created.

~*~

How I started my blogging journey;

As I have shared this story before, I’ll keep it short. A good friend of mine Dr. Tanya started her blog and invited me to check out her posts. She is a great writer and her posts were always good fun. Lots of good advice and information. To visit her blog, I made an account on WordPress. And that’s how I was introduced to the blogging world. One day I started to write my own blog post and have never looked back.

My advice to new bloggers;

Don’t stress out while blogging. Even if you’re writing a Professional blog, don’t let it become a burden. Enjoy your blogging. I find it a great source of mental relaxation!

Make friends in the blogging world. Whatever is your reason for starting a blog, friends always help. It took me 6-8 months to get to know the bloggers I follow really well. I am happy to say that I have found lots of good friends here in the blogging community. And this is the biggest achievement that I am proud of.

My Nominations;

Dr Tanya

Reena Saxena

Msjadeli

Cheryl

Suze

Glen

Rory

Gina

Violet

Tom

Paula

Congratulations to you all.

#Keepitalive

#AwardsAndNominations

Blogging- A mystery solved…. Sort of!

Remember a few weeks ago I wrote a post saying that some of my blog posts are published, without the comment option.

Today I have solved this mystery in part. Not the why it happens at all but why it happens to some posts and not all.

The answer is YouTube.

I don’t know if other bloggers are having the same issue as I am but I am sharing here why it is happening to some of my posts! I hope it can help others too.

My very kind friends here on WordPress usually leave a comment or two on my posts and when after publishing a post I get no comments, I check out the post and sure enough there is no comments option. It doesn’t happen to all my posts so it got me thinking why it happens to just a few of my posts. And here I must admit that since I am blogging mostly from my phone or iPad, it may be just happening to people like me because on the app on iPhone, all the options are not visible when we set the post for publishing.

Anyway, yesterday I posted a post in response to Rory’s prompt. The 321 Quote me. And this happened again! It had a couple of YouTube links in it. And then I realized that all the posts that have a YouTube link in them had this issue. The comment and pingback allowing tabs are unchecked in the settings automatically.

I have no idea what is the correlation between the two but this is happening to my posts because of the links of songs posted in these posts.

So if you are having this problem too, please double check if you’re posting the links from YouTube.

Hope this helps!

#Keepitalive

#Blogging

Blogging Insights # 11 – Getting Personal

Dr. Tanya asks;

Questions;

1. Do you blog under your own name or do you use a pseudonym?

I use a variant of my name as my blogging identity. You can say that it is an amalgam of both!

2. Do you share personal details like gender, nationality, race or faith?

I have shared my gender because my blog is about women above 50 years of age, ( at least it started like that, now I am writing for everyone! ). I haven’t shared other personal details like nationality, race, and faith. I think these details don’t matter as they don’t influence my writing.

3. How much of your personality show through your writing?

I think most people who read my blog, know what sort of person I am. I share my opinions and the way my mind works with my readers and hence I reveal my personality to them totally.

4. Do you share personal experiences to illustrate your writing?

Yes, I do that too. I give examples from my life, often in my writing. Sometimes I share funny anecdotes from my life and sometimes I share thought-provoking experiences to make my readers think.

I think every writer exposes their personality in their writing, intentionally or unintentionally. It a natural thing that our thinking shines through our words. If we are not willing to share this, then our writing can never be genuine.

#Keepitalive

#BloggingInsights

Blogging Insights # 10- Looking Back at your blog posts!

Dr. Tanya asks;

Retrospective Introspection

I read/heard somewhere that reading your own work is a form of narcissism. I would much rather call it self-evaluation or self-assessment.

Questions;

How old is your current blog/website? 

I started my blog on 6th September 2018. Though I had a WordPress account six months prior to that I didn’t use it for blogging, just reading blogs.

Do you ever look back at your site i.e. read through your old posts?

I didn’t use to do it. But then Fandango started his Friday Flashback series and since I had crossed my one year mark, I decided to join in. It was a very interesting experience. I found many of my previous posts very interesting and some I didn’t even remember writing. The reason, I think is twofold;

a) I write most of my posts at the time of posting. That is, there is not a long time spent thinking or writing. So it’s a spur of the moment thing.

b) I write 4-5 blog posts every day and so it’s no wonder that I forget that I even wrote a few of them.

The pleasant surprise was that I found them quite good!!

How long ago did you update your about page?

I never made an “About me“ page till I think six months into blogging. And at that point, it was Renard who in one of his posts stressed upon the importance of an About me page. So I created mine. So far it is relevant to what I am writing on my blog so I have no plans to change it.

If you were to start a new blog today, what would you do differently?

Nopes! I am happy with the way my blog is developing. It is growing as am I. I am learning new skills and experimenting with new genres. I have recently started out I should say, re-started Helen’s Prompt, What do you see. It has been well received. And I am thinking of making it a regular feature.

Besides, I have this philosophy in life that whatever we do we do for a reason. So good or bad, right or wrong, it all has a purpose. I think when I have made mistakes, I have learned from them. So it’s all to a good end.

#Keepitalive

#BloggingInsights

Fandango’s Provocative Question #51

Fandango is the host of Fandango Provocative Question.

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question.

My provocative question today is about blogging etiquette. 

When it comes to pointing out grammatical or usage mistakes of others, McKean wrote, “Be honest with yourself: do you really care about helping the other person, or do you just want the thrill of being right?”

So this leads me to today’s provocative question.

If people find typos or grammatical, punctuation, spelling, or usage errors in your posts, do you welcome having them pointed out to you, or do you resent it. As a blogger do you let people know about such mistakes or do you just let them go?

My response;

This is a very appropriate question for me. As people who read my blog know that I make all sorts of mistakes in my writing. They can be typos, grammatical errors or in my hurry, I post without checking and have completely the wrong word.

In answering the first part of your question, I welcome when someone very kindly points out my mistakes. No offense and genuine gratitude for them. After all, as I will explain in the second part of my answer, it is a bit awkward to tell someone that they should have used ” then” when they wrote “than” or vice versa. Since the new upgrade to iOS, we now can write by “swiping” on the keypad of our phones or iPads. This also results in hilarious mistakes, because ………… I don’t know why but the words I want to write are replaced by totally different words. So much so that the whole thing reads and means something totally different. So for me, feel free to tell me when I am not making sense or am using the wrong tense, spelling or have typos in my posts.

For the second part, I would tell the person that they have made an error in their writing if,

A) They are friends

B) The error is changing the whole meaning of the post

C) I have done it before, that is pointed out an error and they hadn’t minded it.

Other than these situations, I do hesitate to point out an error for the fear of offending the blogger. Sometimes I see that someone else braver than me had pointed it out in the comments section. My friend Tanya and I have this thing that we tell each other of the mistakes by sending a private message. It is awkward to tell someone that there are errors in their posts. But in all honesty, these errors change the complexion of the writing and takes the punch out of it.

#Keepitalive

#FPQ

Blogging- Write clear and simple

Sometimes you come across a very well written post that gives you food for thought, is uplifting, amuses you or educates you. And I think most of us read blogs or books for this purpose. To gain something out of it.

Now there are many posts that though are well written in their usage of words or rhymes but expressed in such a way that you don’t get their meaning after reading them several times. And in the end, you’re not sure that you have understood what the writer is trying to say.

When you want to leave a response to a post like this, you’re not sure what to say. It becomes a difficult task and a lot of time is wasted in deliberation. If like me you are a fastidious person and leaving an appropriate comment is important to you, you may leave without saying anything. Because saying nothing is better than saying the wrong thing. Or one can join them and write something obscure!

So my word of advice to these verbose bloggers, please write simply and clearly. That would carry your message to others in a better and effective manner. Leave the use of difficulty phrases and obsolete words for the occasions when you want to confuse people! Like in a verbal duel.

It is the hallmark of a good writer that they use easy to understand words and say what they want in a clear and concise manner.

In response to the following prompts;

3TC;

Leave, Response, Join

FOWC;

Task

RDP;

Fastidious

Word of the day Challenge;

Uplifting

#Keepitalive

#FOWC

#RDP

#3TC

#DailyPrompts

Blogging Insights # 9- Blog related stress

Dr. Tanya asks;

Blogger Burnout

You must have come across this term in posts about blogging. Today’s topic is completely opposite of last week’s Blogging Insights when we discussed being grateful for blogging. This goes to show what a diverse field blogging is, its various aspects being limited only by the number of bloggers.

 

Questions

1. What, in your opinion, is “Blogger burnout”?

As the name suggests, blogger burnout is when someone has been writing more than they can handle. We don’t come with an infinite capacity to write, so if we exhaust our Creative ideas, we come to a standstill. The ideas or the stories don’t flow out of our proverbial pen and we are left staring at the blank page/ screen. It is not a desirable place for a blogger to be in.

2. Have you ever suffered from blog-related stress?

When I started to blog, I was totally overwhelmed by it. The writing part came fairly easy to me but I was always behind the reading part of the blogging. And we all know that the reciprocal activity of reading and commenting on the blogs of our fellow bloggers is how our blog grows. It took me a few months to develop a system where I could read and write on my blog and yet have free time to pursue my life. Now I am not stressed out by blogging. I also plan ahead and usually have a few posts on the ready to be posted if I feel unable to write on any day!

3. What steps could you suggest to keep blogging from becoming a stressful activity?

•My best advice is to fit in blogging in your lifestyle in a way that leaves you time to relax and follow some physical activity as well. A long walk with a music can do wonders to relax your body and mind. Some people prefer jogging, gym training or swimming. Anything that gets the blood circulating through our body, is beneficial for us. So fit in whatever form of physical activity that you like in your daily schedule.

•Plan ahead for the week. If you have a daily or weekly posting schedule, plan a few posts and schedule them in advance.

•If you miss a day out two or even a week, The blogging world will survive. So no need to be stressed out if life takes priority and you don’t have time.

•If you have a personal blog then there is absolutely no need to feel the stress about the views, comments or likes because these keep on fluctuating with time and date. However, if you have a business blog, then you should plan for all and any eventualities.

These are my views about stress related to blogging!

How about you?

#Keepitalive

#BloggingInsights