Blogosis

So, you sent out your interview questions in that email format I was telling you all about in the 1^st and 2^nd posts in this series. Now, have you gotten some responses? No? Well, let’s figure out why this is.

Too Busy

If you are sending out your questions to big bloggers, you can’t always expect them to reply. Some bloggers get a lot of questions and emails every day, and they don’t have the time, or patience to sit down and read them all. Honestly, they skip over a lot of them. This is why you need a unique subject tag. If it’s generic and something like “Hey” or “What’s up, xxx” then they may not respond. Those are things good friends and clients might send to each other, not complete strangers.

Boooooorrrrrringggggg

Did you make that email of yours way to long? I don’t want to read through 500 words to get to your main point. Like I said, make the intro and body short, and get straight to the questions. Make it easy to find the question to. Don’t bury it in a paragraph. Good formatting of your email comes into play.

You Should Already Know This

What questions did you ask? Are you asking questions they’ve answered 100 times on their blog? Avoid these questions that are already blasted on their blog. Read back a few months into their blog. If they’ve been questioned and answered, there is no reason to ask that blogger again. Ask unique and creative questions that they wouldn’t have normally come up with.

That will wrap it up for this series. I’m going to be emailing my interview questions to a few bloggers around the blogosphere and you should see some answers starts to arrive here soon.

Anyone want to see more short series or interview me? Send me an email at justindupre@blogosis.com and let’s get talking!

I want to that Mr. Polite for writing this title in my last post comments.

Anyways, for my dedicated readers, you probably noticed I wasn’t in the best of moods for the past week. This may have been from a lack of sleep, overworking myself, or just a silly mood swing, but did you enjoy it? General consensus was no.

Even had I been giving advice on how to make your blog better, which Andrew told me I hadn’t been in another post, but I still had a pissy, bitchy attitude, would you have listened to me? Chances are that you wouldn’t.

Do you listen to the guy at the party that talks about everything like he is an expert, and then you say something in denial of his facts, and that person will turn around to just tell you how wrong you are? I wouldn’t listen to that crap, no matter how right he was. I can’t stand people that need to be right, and when they are wrong, they won’t apologize. Don’t do this on your blog, ever. There could be thousands of people out there that have more experience than you in your niche or certain aspects of it. Open up and let them in on a discussion. Allow their ideas to flow in.

Make your blog friendly. Who honestly likes that bitchy, whiny ‘friend’ who will complain about all their problems without listening to yours? No one…

Thanks to my readers and subscribers for reminding me.

Bloggers can get under a lot of stress. I get stressed when something I try to put in my blog doesn’t transform like it should. I get stressed when I just can’t find the right word. I get stressed when I lose 5 subscribers in one day. Bloggers get stressed when they can’t meet a goal. Bloggers are people, so we get stressed from the daily occurrences that happen in life. This stress gets in the way of our writing, and may interfere with our subscriber numbers.

Why am I writing about stress? Today, I went through a lot of it. I went to go eat pizza, and as I was sitting down looking at my empty plate a couple of girls snuck in and sat behind me. They started saying what sounded like “Bun!.. Bun, Bun! Bun Bun Bun Bun!” I thought at first they were calling for me because my nickname is Bud (Justin comes out sounding like Jut-din because Thais can’t end words with an “s” sound so I just use Bud to make it easy), and sometimes ending consonants sounds come out short in Thai (n and d can sound the same). I figured they weren’t calling me so I went back to my focused stare to the blank plate at my table.

The food came to my table, and then came a tap on my back. ‘Oh, it must be one of my Windows Live friends,’ I thought. I was in for a surprise though. It was one of my ex-girlfriends and her friend. Oh man, that is stress right there. They came and sat at my table where I went into a lot of staring into the spaghetti and pizza in front of me. Then her friend decides to ask a bomb of a question:

“Why did you break up with her?”

Oh my god! I wanted to throw up. That is an extremely stressful question. I couldn’t take it. I wanted to throw up. They sensed I was really uneasy (I’m really shy and not too confident for some unknown reason), so they moved back to their table. I got some boxes to go and got out of there. That was a smart decision, because I instantly felt relieved of a lot of “baggage” hanging on my shoulders. That’s my first tip of this post. If you are in a stressful situation or place, do whatever the hell you can do to get out of it.

I got home, but still being phased I almost missed today’s blog post. I couldn’t think of what to blog about. I was just empty.

Stress is a big cause of “Blogger’s Block,” so I made an attempt to get over that stress. I practice several forms of stress relief that help me ignore things happening and let me focus on my blog writing.

Do anything you can to get your head to push out the stress

I basically tried to get all those thoughts out of my head. I went in some chat rooms, called some friends, read some blogs, and did research for my work. I overloaded my brain until I just couldn’t think about anything else. That overload pushed unnecessary things out of my mind, and negative stress is unnecessary.

Do something you love

If you are dedicated to something, or you find something that you can really focus on, do it! I love writing, so I decided to start a story I need to do for one of my classes. I started writing a research paper for another. I thought about those other things so I wouldn’t think about my ex.

Get that stress out in alternative forms

Talk about what is stressing you out. I told friends what happened. I am so grateful to have some of the most amazing friends in Thailand (You will never find people more willing to be your friend anywhere in the world. Meet a new person and they will literally be asking to be your friend and want to take you everywhere in 5 minutes). They were extremely supportive. Now I am getting my stress out again. I am writing about it for you.

Do something that will calm you

I don’t meditate much, but for those that like to experiment with the idea, I hear it is one of the most mind-freeing things you can do. For me, I might take a nap. I wake up unaware of my surroundings, and sometimes groggy, but that grogginess keeps me from remembering things that stress me out.

Take your stress out with violence

Call your neighbor over and punch him in the gut. Kick his dog. Steal his car and crash it into a concrete barrier. Okay, just kidding. Don’t do that. (I hope PETA doesn’t read this) Get a pillow, get a hated stuffed doll, or get your sister (just kidding again. Love you sis) and beat the stuffing out of it. This is a great release for those times when you just can’t take it anymore.

Give a good cry

Ah, crying. I’m not going to lie, for a guy, I’m a girl when it comes to crying. I can cry a lot if I want to, but who cares. It’s a good stress reliever. Any guy claiming that he never cries is a liar. If he insists he has never cried though, there’s a spot in between his legs that will test if that’s true or not. I don’t condone this kind of action though, ladies.

Eat some food

The number one stress reliever in my book. I took that pizza home and got some bites in before it got cold. A tub of ice cream is great for this. Any other fatty foods are highly recommended. Remember, you will need to adjust the rest of your daily diets if this happens though.

Exercise

If you do eat that ice cream, you probably need this anyways. Run some laps around a track (or your house if you have no other options. Who cares what the neighbors think. The crazier you come off the less likely you will have to ever talk to them. I never liked my neighbors anyways.) Lift some weights or do some pull-ups. The intensity of it will get your heart pumping and sweat flowing, leaving other things for you to focus on.

Swear a lot

I love to swear when things don’t go the way I want. I say it loud and proud like I don’t care, and I really don’t. Screaming “FIRETRUCK” helps me have a certain kind of power, like if I say it, it will go my way. And it does! Haha. Try it. If you don’t swear, say JEEBUS or something like that. A nice “AHHHHHH!” will probably be in order as well.

Using these methods, I can push out a blog post no matter how stressed I really am. So relax yourself and put yourself in a blogging mood. Ignore that stress and keep your blog posts in order and up to date. If all the above doesn’t work, it is probably time to take a rest. Your blog may actually be the cause of your stress. In these cases, announce on your blog that you are taking a personal break. You probably deserve it, and if your subscribers love your content they will probably stick around.

Kitties. Alright, I didn’t really want to use that word, but I hope you get what I was implying by starting a sentence like that. This blog entry is not about you, but what should be affecting the way you write. At sometime, for those that are considering creating a successful blog, you the blogger will have to realize you are going to have to stop blogging for yourself, and start blogging for someone else.

These someone’s are your blog’s subscribers. Facing this fact is kind of a horrifying idea. You really want to be writing for yourself. You want to be in control of your blog. A successful blog, however, is built around its readership. If you are providing good content for yourself that is rubbish to your readers, you will only ever have one reader (Two if you encourage your mother to subscribe. Thanks, Mom.).

I really hate to classify you in this category, but subscribers are greedy and selfish. Blog subscribers are cruel, critical, and they will find any little way to condemn your blog that they can (The three C’s?). Even if they have a small reason, even one that may not directly pertain to them, that reason will be enough for you to see a drop in subscriber numbers. New readers won’t even have a reason to not click the back button if they find one thing they don’t appreciate about your blog.

They will hate you for your blog design, the colors of it, and how the ads are laid out. If they only like blogs with “magazine-style” themes and you use a traditional blog theme, kiss that reader goodbye. If they don’t like the personality you show off, a subscriber won’t want to read you. Have a typo or grammar error? No problem! Not. The worst thing they could hate you for, though, is your content.

Write original gripping content and a reader may be able to look past their dissatisfactions. Capture them with an amazing title, and drag them further and further into your content with “flow”. Use hooks. Use stories. Use twists and turns. Use your life experience. Show off creativity in your blog with images. Make it complex enough for a subscriber that reads your blog posts minutes after you post (Link love to ESVL), yet make it simple to hold a new readers attention.

It is an incredibly difficult balancing act between aesthetics in your writing, and whether or not your kitties have something to learn from reading your content. So please those selfish kitties. Write for them while maintaining that inner voice that they love from your blog content, are alter it so they will love it.

My Girlfriend (She’s a super model, btw), bought a couple rabbits. I certainly was not pleased to see them running around leaving their wonderful surprises all over my room, despite how adorable they actually were. I’ve had to take care of them, feed them, clean them, and whatnot. Now, it just seems so natural, and I have fallen in love with them (for the most part…). It has reminded me of blogging. You dread it, you hate it, especially in the beginning. I certainly went through this stage, but as you, the blogger, grow with your blog you can see it become a part of you. For some it may take some time, and for others, less than a week. If you want this to come easier to you though, you need to care for your blog just as you would any rabbit. Let me show you how.

• You need to feed your blog, and feed it correctly.

A rabbit needs  to be fed food and water several times a day. Your blog might only need it once a day or a couple times a week, but you still need to give your blog some original content. This isn’t all a blog needs though. If you feed a rabbit spoiled vegetables or dirty water you are left with, well, crap. If you aren’t writing original well thought out content for your blog, what are you going to get out of it? Just the same. Also, every once in a while, you might please your rabbit with a snack. This is perfectly fine. Put something fun on your blog. Write an entry that is off the seriousness of your niche. Make your blog a happy blog!

• You need to give your rabbit some shelter

Now what could this imply? You don’t want your rabbit running around on someone else’s property, otherwise, they can do with it whatever they please. What I am saying here, is get your blogs off of free web hosting. Set up your blog on the Wordpress CMS and pay 60 bucks for hosting and a domain name. Putting your blog on Blogger or Wordpress’ free hosting shows that you are extremely unprofessional, and not too serious about blogging. I can understand some may not have the money or credit card needed to get that hosting. Get a job for one day, work 8 hours, sign up at Dreamhost and get $50 dollars off when you use the code OSIS. Alternatively you could steal your parents credit card, but I don’t condone this, I am just getting you ideas. I don’t let my rabbits run off into someone else’s hands. Neither should you.

• Clean your rabbit and its habitat

After about 3 - 4 days, these rabbits stink. Their cage is full of crap and what not. It’s a total mess. My girlfriend (the supermodel) doesn’t always do this, so a lot of the time I am stuck with the chore. It’s not a big deal, but something that should be done regularly. You should always check your blog to see where you can clean up parts. You can clean up your blog posts, wash your sidebars, or scrub upon your new header design. You don’t need to do this every week though, maybe once a month is even too much. Make sure your blog presents itself nicely though. People love clean rabbits, just as your subscribers love clean blogs.

• Play with your rabbit and let it have a little fun
  

This is an important one. This will show that you really love your rabbit, and if you love your rabbit, it will love you back. Get involved with your blog’s community. Have a little fun with them. Converse, joke, tease, post interesting things related to your blog, make a contest. ENJOY IT! Being a blogger is a great ‘job.’ You get to write about things you love and are passionate about. If you aren’t passionate about it, maybe you need to think about giving the blog to a friend, or selling it. I would hate to do that to one of my rabbits, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

And that is how you love a blog like a bunny! Silly how all these connections really make sense to me. I dropped out of my philosophy class because of what a joke it all seemed to me. Now look at me. All life seems to be connected to blogging. I don’t need no stinkin’ philosophy class to teach me that. Maybe I’ve confused you, my subscribers though (At an amazing 45 after less than a month!). Need me to guide you more upon these connections of mine? Have any connections between your bunnies, or any animals for that matter, towards blogging? Let them be known. Comment!

Make money by posting blogs here.

Not a true title, but it might as well be. Think about what professional athletes do. Now think about what bloggers do. Do you see any similarities? If you don’t, don’t worry because the idea is a little abstract. Here is why you should consider yourself as an athlete if you are a blogger (or any kind of writer):

Athletes do not learn to play a sport. No, they don’t! They practice, practice, practice, rinse and repeat x3. What do bloggers (and writers) do? They write (practice), write (practice), write (practice), rinse and repeat x3.

This is a pretty interesting idea that should knock any “learn to blog” name out. I am damn glad this blog is titled with “The Process of a Blog,” or I would just be contradicting myself. Any bloggers out there might want to change their“learn to blog” niche, to a “practice blogging” niche, or something. I’m not exactly sure what kind of blog niche you could list it as. (If only “the process of a blog” wasn’t already taken, right?)

Back on topic, let’s think about this idea. Who tells you or teaches you how to write? No one! Your teachers in high school and college helped you find your own practice methods and voice with those tedious writing exercises. That is all. If they taught you how to write, you would be writing like them. In fact, everyone in your class would turn in the same papers. Every blog would be the same. Instead, we are just training ourselves to write with our own style.

An athlete trains. They swing their bats differently, no spiral on a (American) football is the same, and every bicycle kick in soccer is incomparable to the next. This is because they form their own style, which is what every blogger should practice to do. Find your individual voice in your posts and let it flow. Train yourself to be continually optimizing that voice by practicing, and practicing often.

You all know that childish saying: “15 minutes a day and you will be perfect in no time,” or something like that. Well, we can conclude that you will never, ever be perfect, but it is something you must always be training yourself to obtain perfection (or the closest you can get to perfection). There are always little failures in our blogging we can train ourselves to improve, just the same as any Olympic athlete would do. Here is how I train and how you can train to improve yourself to Olympic blogger status:

• · A real Olympic athlete trains 8-14 hours a day. While sitting in front of a computer for that long isn’t healthy, you can gain a lot by putting in that ’15 minutes a day.’ You’ve probably noticed this, but I blog daily, and normally more than once. That’s my time right there.

• · An Olympic athlete reviews themselves to inspect their performance. Go back and read your posts. Read the post you just posted. Read it again after a week, and again after a month. See the difference in your blogging voice? I have.

• · An Olympic athlete has personal trainers and coaches. Get people to constructively criticize your posts. Don’t get your 12 year old sister to do it, but get someone educated to do it. Take your blog posts to an English teacher at your college. They love talking about writing, at least mine does. Offer them a beer to sit down with you once a week and review how you can further build on your writing style

• · An Olympic athlete uses their training as a guiding point. A tip pertaining to the last point, DO NOT let them tell you how to write. If they say you should have written something differently, take note of it, and examine that yourself. Is that really a better sounding voice that what I had previously written?

• · An Olympic athlete uses their connections to other athletes and fans to their advantage. Use your subscriber e-mail list to your advantage. There is a reason I’m requiring people to sign up via email for my big giveaway contest. I am building up personal links to people that I can refer to if I need help reviewing my blog style, writing style, design or anything else I may need them for. To all subscribers: Don’t worry, I will not spam your box with e-book offers. Yuck.

• · An Olympic athlete will do many more activities than they will participate in for the Olympics to prepare themselves for all aspects of it. Do writing exercises outside of blogging. Write a fiction story, a poem, haiku, a personal essay, or an autobiography. It doesn’t matter for a blogger that is serious about the business. Your blog is all about writing, so you should know how to put together a story, a catchy saying, factual information, or an interview with others in your niche. Practicing any style of writing! It will help provide you with a building point for new blog posts, alternative ideas and stories, and experiments that may see your subscription number boom.

Who knows? Maybe someday we will see the geek Olympics or something. Blogging could certainly be a part of that. And if that day does come along, just keep in mind of what other athletes do to prepare themselves. Blogging is not always easy, but you can train yourself to become a better blogger, indefinitely. Blog daily, review your blog, get criticism but don’t let it affect what you want to do, use your connections, and practice writing in all different styles.

These are my tips on Olympic blogging. Do you see any more connections between blogging and the Olympics?