A Shining Blog

What makes your blog shine? Mark Glaser lists this article on Reporters Without Borders, where you can find a whole handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents (take a look, it's really interesting and is available in five different languages). For similar readings, click here, and here.

So, making your blog shine is not about writing long, complicated and non-stop posts, nor it is exculsively about traffic blogs and huge comments flowing everyday. It's mostly about choosing topics where you really excel, updating regularly, engaging your audience and being yourselves. Readers do tell when a blogger is outsmarting them; and let's not forget that we want to read about people who are like us, talking about similar issues in a free and open way, and experiencing the same ups and downs as ours; or else we would have picked up the nearest newspaper or magazine and started reading. Some writers aim at having professional blogs, whereas I, for example, would like to see something more personal, something to connect to. Good blogs are also about writers who make you laugh on occasions, are not afraid to admit it when they are wrong, and diversify their subjects every once in a while.

But one should remember that nothing kills good writing faster than office politics; the paralytic fear of "not being right". Good blogs require taking risks. They require going crazy from time to time. They require abandoning all subjective rules about what really makes a successful blog, or perhaps a popular one. It's all about asking oneself: "Am I writing to please readers or myself?" The truth is I don't think anyone is really writing for himself, even those who chose not to receive comments; or else they would have just kept a personal secret diary. Behind each one of these anonymous blogs, there is a person who is reaching for others, who is perhaps searching for someone to read, I mean really read him, and understand. Eventually, we become owned by the blog, which we had once owned. Eventually, we dig into our archive, to remember what we were thinking about, one or two years earlier: it's us but not really; it's what we used to be; it's all our life that is flashing before our eyes. Is this what blogs are for? to watch you grow, and grow up with you?