What is a blog, really? (Blogging anti-tips)

A lot of people have made sets of didactic blogging tips or rules that govern how you should run your blog. Ignore them. Your blog is your little piece of the internet, and you can do whatever you want with it.

Even the definition of a blog is restrictive:

A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. (Wikipedia)

Yes, blogs are arranged in chronological order. But even many common blogs don’t conform to this standard. I think that the popularity of blogs owes to both the blog format, which allows people to keep online journals and frees them of the responsibility of maintaining a rigidly structured website, and blog software (WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type), which allows people to publish online without dealing with all of the technical aspects of site design, coding, hosting, etc.

Not every blog is a journal. Many use their blogs to maintain more traditional websites. This is especially true of those that use WordPress and Movable Type, which are essentially content-management systems (categories, static pages, etc.) that present content chronologically. People can be very creative and resourceful, finding uses that go well beyond the original intent of the tools available to them.

So, since bloggers use blogs for an incredible variety of purposes, why should they all be bound to a single set of rules. I want to look at some common blogging tips, and eviscerate them.

Stupid rule 1: Write short posts, containing maybe a link or two, plus some commentary.

This is terrible advice. Write as little or as much as you need to get your point across. If you’re writing a blog post that attempts to teach people the basics of golf, you’d better have a long post. However, if you’re just linking to a video of a cat farting, you probably don’t need more than a few words. Mix the two throughout your blog, depending on your needs. Or write all short link posts. Or all long-winded opinion posts.

As long as you have something interesting to say, it really shouldn’t matter how much space it takes you to say it.

Stupid rule 2: Publish with the same frequency, all the time.

Why? If you don’t have anything to say, don’t bother. I’d rather read nothing at all than something that you wrote just because you felt like you needed to have a post. My favorite blog, Freakonomics, has miserable posting frequency. There will be weeks without posts, then three posts in the same day. That reflects the nature of life: sometimes a lot of interesting ideas pour out all at once.

Stupid rule 3: Keep your blog topical.

Nah. Write about whatever you want. Unless you created your blog specifically to deal with one topic, like a class or a new product, then why limit yourself? You can use categories and search to make it easier to find blog posts on specific topics, so why limit yourself. Signal vs. Noise, the blog from the people that make Writeboard, Backpack, etc. usually has posts about interesting designs or small business strategies. But sometimes they’ll venture into the world of why Kinko’s sucks or amateur art. And that’s a corporate blog. Personal blogs should have even more freedom to meander from topic to topic.

Stupid rule 4: Don’t use a free blogging service.

Okay, except that PostSecret, Scoble, Writely and a bunch of other high-profile blogs do, and they don’t seem to be having any trouble. And plenty of articles hosted on WordPress.com are getting dugg.

There’s nothing wrong with paying for your own hosting. Doing so gives you more flexibility and control of your website. But neither is there anything wrong with using a hosted service. What? It’s too hard to remember a subdomain? That’s what Bloglines and del.icio.us are for.

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My point is this: there’s a good chance that the rules won’t apply to your blog. So why bother reading them? And why bother making them? As long as you make sure that your blog is interesting (to someone) and readable (well written and easy to navigate) then you’re doing fine. And if you don’t want to make your blog interesting or readable, that doesn’t really matter either — it’s your blog. Do whatever you want.