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BLOGGING ISN'T ALL ABOUT WRITING |
If you’re launching a topical blog, your selection of voice is also an editorial decision. Will you balance your entries toward objective filtering of news or your personal commentary? Will you link to stories about which you can be critical? Is unabashed enthusiasm your style? Do you want to project an acerbic persona or a gentler voice that readers trust to recommend items of interest around the Web? Serious or funny? Deep or superficial?
One editorial attitude that particularly characterizes blogs is called snark.Snark can be sarcasm, ill temper, scathing criticism, cynicism, or any combination of grouchy attributes.
Snarky writing is like a badge of honor for many bloggers, but more than that it represents a certain know-it-all informality of the genre. An unrelentingly snarky voice can be tiresome, but you should feel that snark is always available when you feel strongly about something especially when you feel strongly critical. The entire idea of “finding a voice” might not appeal to some readers. It’s a bit nebulous. If defining a personal style isn’t important to you, it’s not important, period. Your blog might develop a distinct tone over time, or you might start out effortlessly being exactly yourself (not the easiest trick in writing) and stay that way. Nothing in this section is a requirement.
Using Comments in Your Blog You might not realize it until you get deeper into your blogging lifestyle, but bloggers spend an amazing amount of time tracking the influence of their blogging. That means attempting to locate other blogs citing their work and figuring out who is talking about them. Blogging isn’t only about writing; it’s about inducing other people to respond, either on one’s own blog or in another blog.
Casual bloggers — diarists, families blogging together, teens blogging in social networks, and many other bloggers — don’t bother with techniques of self-infatuation. Later in the chapter, I cover self-promotion, which is closely related to self-tracking. It’s all about attracting attention, for those with a taste for attention. If your blog accepts comments (most blogs do), the comments you receive are the most direct indications that people are reading and responding to your stuff. Tending to your comments — reading them, responding to them.
The degree to which you’re willing to attend to your comments can determine the extent to which your blog becomes a con versation forum and the style with which you write entries. To a large degree, comments are solicited by bloggers who write in a conver- sational style or even directly request comments. The old “What do you think?” directed to the readership at large is a request (a somewhat desperate invitation, at that) for feedback. Some bloggers run polls and surveys to get some traffic flowing in the comments section. Well-known bloggers attract
comments simply because people want to talk to them or because a comment that contains a link to the commentor’s blog is a promotional gambit.