5 Ways to Make Us Care About Your Navel Lint

Rachel Thompson

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5 Ways To Make Us Care About Your Navel Lint

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5 Ways To Make Us Care About Your Navel Lint

Image courtesy of Google Images

 

I’ve noticed a somewhat disturbing trend in blogs lately.

 

People are pissing me off.

 

Not because I don’t agree with what people are saying – okay, sometimes I don’t; Freedom of Speech and all that – but because it’s all about them, all the time.

 

Which is fine – if you want to tell us everything you ate for dinner or how your hair looks in pigtails, knock yourself out – if you’re a foodie or a hair stylist. But you must realize that we come to your blog expecting your words to actually mean something; amuse and/or entertain us, raise issues that make us feel guilty for leading our petty lives in branded vain, or show us the latest vanity product we can’t live without.

 

Oops, sidetracked.

 

In other words, we don’t give a flying f**k about your pigtails.

 

This Bart Simpson Syndrome (Look at me! It’s all about me! Me, me, me!) is a sad by-product of blogging. Not all bloggers are writers – fine, whatever. I don’t personally care if you’re an illiterate spaceship salesperson from Mars, just be interesting.

 

I am not pointing or naming names here; I simply want you to look at your navel lint and decide if we will care. At All.

 

So, what can we do as bloggers to prevent readers from feeling like they’re wasting their time?

 

 

  • Ask your followers what they want. Shocking, I know. But guess what? People tell me all the time what their needs are, ask for information they can’t find or don’t understand, or tell me they’re ready for more Mancode or serious posts. Great! Terrific! I’m in touch with my peeps and they’re in touch with me because I ask them stuff.

 

  • Invite guests to write for you. All of us are interesting, special, yada yada. But it’s good to share different perspectives, and have others share their experiences. What’s in my head and seems interesting to me may be the post that puts you to sleep. Tap the potential of colleagues, people you admire, even people you’d never ask normally. Step out of your box!

 

  • Be your keywords; become your keywords. If you always blog about the same single topic, we’re gone. If you’re random, same thing. What’s the middle ground? Knowing your brand. Everybody has one, even if you reject it (which is stupid, but whatever). Ever watch Shark Tank? Great show. Allllll about branding (okay, and making deals for lots of money. Small detail.). Figure out six or so things that have something to do with your something.

 

For example, my keywords are men, women, relationships, blogging, writing, social media, and snark. Backups include vodka, coffee, and Nutella. It’s not that I can’t talk about other stuff, but these are the topics than I’m instinctively drawn to anyway.

 

  • K.I.S.S. aka Keep it short, stupid. No offense to any of my dear prolific author friends, but if you’ve got a lot (two words, dammit) to say, split it into another post.

 

500-750 words is plenty for one post. If you’re giving a lesson or demonstrating something, go long (are we talking about football here?), but even then consider Part I and Part 2.)

 

We know every word you write is gold, but consider breaking it up even further into short sentences, paragraphs, and using bullets (Whoa. I just did that.) Share the wealth.

 

  • Comments. I can’t tell you how irritating it is to leave an amazing (okay, down children – you know you feel the same way, shut up) comment on a blog and never get a response! The whole point of blogging is so people will think we’re brilliant, right? Oh wait, that’s just me. Anyway, answer your damn comments, people. I personally don’t care how ‘big and important’ you are – it’s us little people who got you there.

 

 

I guess that’s all that’s bothering me this week (not really but I’m at 662 words and don’t want to break my own rules). Tune in next week for more hopefully somewhat more intelligent drivel.

 

 

 

 

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Comments

  13. The problem with that, my sweet, as I commented just last weekend when talking to one of my daughters and son-in-law – and don’t ask why we were discussing navels or belly buttons – but I happened to say, “I miss my fluff, where has all the fluff gone?” to which my son-in law responded, “change in fabric, dad!”

    Wow, go figure there is a heavy goods vehicle grease monkey telling me, ‘a change of fabrics’.

    The point about blogging as a medium is that I don’t think it was purely thought of as an aid to ‘professionals’ such as you and other authors or business people with a another course in business marketing skills to sell to put across to the rest of us peasants. I think it started off as professionals with on line diarys and the first blogs needed to be written by people skilled in HTML and the likes, and didn’t allow for interactivity, such as comments and interaction between the writer and the reader.

    Clearly it has moved on a pace since those days and it is almost the reverse side of Twitter which limits us to 140 characters and the same with the response. The blog, we can write as much as we want or can think of and so to can any respondents!

    It throws up all sorts of questions of course especially here in the UK where we are all supposed to be so reserved about talking about things and yet here we are displaying our innermost thoughts to the world, even you about the problems you have had in your life, which is no bad thing for some, as it can add closure to old wounds and give hope to others in similar situations.

    And there are some interesting blogs about the ‘me’ that you comment on. People, who have adversity in their lives either through their own misfortune or that of others in their families or circle which give readers, who again might have similar problems, some hope or at least a new perspective to the problems that they face. Just in the same way as readers of your past problems were hopefully given a possibility that their situation good improve by reading how you dealt with them!

    As for the comments – not being left on posts – when you know someone has actually read it – yep, I’m with you sweet pea …. Even if wot I say is bollocks – tell me ….

    And as to what I do write and publish it’s just all the stuff that I’ve been telling Ishbel for the last 37 odd years, but now I see she has taken to wearing headphones on a more regular basis and I’m not even sure she has them always plugged in to anything to listen to!

    468 words, is that ok for a response or too much? xxx

    Reply

    • Great comment, Tom.

      I fully agree, and participate in, personal essays (you’ve read my books so you know!) and use my blog to share those stories. Blogs ARE personal, no doubt. Your blog posts are terrific because you’re funny and share funny stories and opinions. I give my blog over every other week to authors who have amazing personal stories to tell. I love the medium.

      My beef is not with you or people like you and I. It’s more when people post inane stuff just to throw something up there every single day for better Google ranking or SEO — I follow A LOT of blogs and am disappointed that many don’t SAY anything.

      But as I mentioned, free speech etc. If people want to post a pic of an ant and call it a post, who am I to argue? That ant could be the segue into an involving discussion about life.

      Or something.

      Reply

  30. Oh, you meant this big empty comment box. There is one up above as well. Don’t know what that’s about. I can’t remember the brilliant 🙂 comment I was going to make. I do agree though that some people think seem to think their lives are so fascinating that we all want to read every detail. Personally, I don’t care what you ate for breakfast. Unless of course it’s Nutella. I do love that stuff!

    Reply

  37. Great blog. I’m sure we all fall into the trap of the “me” category…I certainly do. Now the branding issue, sigh. I struggle with this. I guess if I went through all my posts, I’d realize I write about parenting, marriage, animals, adoption, writing, and food. Hmm, that’s six. Not bad.

    I love your stuff…

    I agree wholeheartedly about the length issue. I try try try not to fall into the trap of posting a picture or quote, and calling it a blog. Blah. And I can’t read more than 1500 words unless you are BRILLIANT.

    Thanks again..
    Julie! (I put the exclamation point there just for you 🙂

    Reply

    • Thanks Julie. I write about branding over on my biz blog, http://BadRedheadMedia.com and go much more into it (I think I should link that one here — make it easier for people). Branding is really what you’re naturally drawn to anyway, but putting some key phrases or words to it. We write about our interests, likes, dislikes inherently, as you can see clearly from your blog topics. It’s all right there!

      (I secretly use exclamation marks over here….shhhh). 🙂

      Reply

  38. WTF!! Who’s “Branded Vein”? Some vampire you know? (Bloody Marys have vodka in them right?)
    MORE IMPORTANTLY: how do you feel about this JIF hazelnut crap horning in on your nutella action?
    (YES. I think of the BadRedhead when I am watching TV commercials: JIF hazelnut ripoff–>Nutella, the real thing–> RachelintheOC/Sacremento.) Great googely-moogely! This redhead is a genius!
    Have a great one, kiddo. TY for the post.

    Reply

    • I guess I’ve succeeded in branding then :). Yay!

      (P.S. I’m out of Nutella. Totally spaced getting it at the store. Not my fault surfer dudes caught my attention…) Ahem.

      Branded vain — yes, I meant our global desire for ‘stuff’ — sorry if that didn’t come across that way. My bad.

      I was probably out of Nutella when I wrote that.

      Reply

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