Forgive Me

Yesterday, I read this post “9 unforgivable blogging offenses“.

I thought that the nine points were worthy of reflection on some of the things around here.  Hopefully, faithful readers will chirp in and let me know where I’m right and I’m wrong.

1. Your posts are all dense text.

There are times when they are.  Typically, it’s because I don’t have any imagery to go with it.  If I’m talking about a piece of software or a technique, I like to do screen captures and include them.  Periodically, I’ll insert a video or an image if I’ve taken one.  I’m not really big into just grabbing someone else’s imagery, even if it is CC, just to have an image.  Even when my posts are all text, I try to include lots of short paragraphs to make it easier to read.  Maybe I need to pay more attention to the images.

2. Even you don’t care what you write about.

I think I’m good about this.  Everything that I include here I either am passionate about or have an opinion of some sort.  I recognize that may not always agree with everyone but, hey, that’s OK.

3. Your blog design isn’t consistent.

I have changed the theme three times that I can remember.  Two of the themes were white and green and I flirted with black once.  I didn’t like the black layouts.

4. You cram your blog with advertisements.

I don’t purposely put advertisements on the blog.  I’m not in it to make money.  I do understand that WordPress itself inserts advertisements to help them pay the bills.  They’re not from me though.

5. Your blog is like a ghost town.

I think I’m good here.  I’ve got an About Doug and this Blog page.  Maybe I’ve done something right?

6. You don’t promote your blog.

This really is something that I worry about.  Do I promote it too much?  I have it auto posted for 5am in the morning and then DLVR automatically posts the announcement of a new post to Twitter.  I figure that way, if you don’t want to be bugged by me, everything else in your timeline will have backfilled things.  If you do want to read my stuff, then you’ll subscribe.  Then comes the noisy part.  My Twitter posts get auto posted to Facebook because I know some of my friends live there and not Twitter.  The problem becomes when you are using both – you get both of them announced.  I also post to Google + (when I remember) and to Pinterest.  I also use Packratius to automatically fill my Diigo stream with anything I post to Twitter that has a link in it.  So, the announcement that it’s posted ends up on Diigo.  I also backup my Diigo account to Delicious so another link appears there.

Sometimes I feel that I’ve gone to automation overdrive.  (It started as a test to see if it works…)  Then, everything now and again someone will like my posts and reTweet it.  Another thing potentially in your face.

So, I do promote my blog but too much?

7. Your blog is full of guest posts.

I’m good here.  Nobody but the occasional spammer ever wants to post here.  Sometimes, I think a guest post would ease the load but then I back away.  At least with just me posting, you know what type of nonsense to expect!

8. Your headlines are confusing or boring.

I try to make them interesting.  I really do.  Every now and again I find something witty.

9. You hide advertising in your blog posts.

There’s no formal advertising per se that I get revenue from.  However, in the education business, aren’t we all sales people?  We’re selling ideas, thoughts, motivations, software that works, concepts, …

OK, there’s my two cents worth.   Gratuitous image  Some rights reserved by zen

What do you think?  Do you agree?  Where have I not done a good job analyzing myself?

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