#14: Open Threads. “I can’t think of anything to write, so how about you write for me?”
I have to say I totally disagree with number #8. Just do a define:blog on google and you’ll get a load of definitions that say a blog is exactly an online diary 
- Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site.
- An online Journal.
- A weblog or internet diary.
- A personal journal/diary that is available on the web.
- Blog (originally weblog) is a diary or history.
- Online journal of a website owner.
Addendum to list: Embedded objects or widgets that grab keyboard focus on load.
Jeff, you might want to use em-dash html entity (#8212;) instead of using double dash --, this what I learn from John Gruber of DaringFireball. Your blog has been my favorite all time insightful writings, I don’t know how actually you keep up with your writing and work, and of course your idea streaming engine.
I have seen so many sites sprung up with all top (n) listamatic tantamount points, which I believe it to be one of de facto ways to get to the top social digging sites like digg itself. Though it is highly excessive information overload, probably one of the top productivity killers, and people likes it. Which I find it weird. It is unclear whether to put these top (n) list stuffs under blogs that works or blogs that doesn’t work so well.
I laughed my ass off when I read the point about meta-blogging. You have a very dry humor
Agree with pauldwait and Scott about #8. It’s a good rule if you’re trying to be a “professional blogger.” But most people who write blogs aren’t. They’re interested in providing an update on the big things in their lives (not the minutiae), and the flow and progress of their thoughts, to a probably quite limited audience of their friends, family, and a few random fellow-travellers. Reading “planet” sites (aggregators of the blogs of people within a thematically-defined community) like Planet Gnome and Planet Emacsen, I’m actually quite glad to read diary-type posts. It gives me a window into the lives of people with whom I have something in common, even though they might otherwise be very different from me. Yes, posting diary-type stuff makes you a “commodity blogger.” But I disagree that that’s necessarily a bad thing for most bloggers.
I think #9 (pick a schedule and stick to it) is bogus, too. Most people who read a blog read it via its feeds, and so will be notified when there’s a new post. You don’t have to stick to a schedule just to make sure that there’s new content when they come back to it – this isn’t 1999, and people aren’t checking their bookmarked sites manually. Of course, it’s also pointless to apologize for not posting regularly, for the same reason. Just post when you have material.
There should probably be another one added – if you’re trying to make your blog your job, don’t make it obvious. None of the blog cliches above are as annoying as a blogger who has specifically adopted advice like “don’t be a commodity blogger” or “always stick to a schedule” because they see that as the way to make money or to be an A-list blogger.
GREAT POST! Back to basic with the obvious.
It made me change my position on blogging, and I am off to change a few things on my BLOGS.
Thanks, Larry
You mention inserting images and breaking up text as a way of improving readability for a blog. There’s a third way to improve readability that you should have mentioned: limit column width. Lines should not run on endlessly, and, for many readers, having to do that manual carriage return on long lines can become a pain since it is easy to lose your place. Newspapers have known this for a very long time, and I see many blogs now picking this up as well.
This was a good read. I disagree with what you said about tag clouds though (perhaps because I don’t want to admit that the tag clouds my site heavily rely on aren’t actually poor design). I think some clouds are easier on the eyes than others. The one depicted in this article is indeed horrible. On the other hand, I find sites like Flickr have it right.
Also, as far as #8 goes, I think it has a lot to do with your target audience. If you’re trying to attract a large portion of the internet then writing about what you bought at the supermarket isn’t very appealing. But if your blog is something you share with your friends, then they might be interested in your day-to-day life.
I am the developer of the Blogger Calendar [java version]. I use my calendar often to tell me what I was doing when provided a reference date. I tend to blog everything.
I have found a great many uses. The link I provided demonstrates one of the installations of the calendar. I hope you will check it out.
Regina Thomas
QiSoftware
What i don’t like also, and this happens sometimes in different kinds of articles on web pages, not just in blogs, is putting more than 1 link with the same destination very close to each other, just like you did in “Mindless Link Propagation” paragraph: 2 links to the same “http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/08/18/10-ways-to-eliminate-the-echo-chamber/” page.
Great, absolutely great article! I especially liked it because I have followed all of these practices from the beginning, for carefully thought-out reasons just like you wrote.
The only two I violate is (11) and (3). (11) because sometimes an event is newsworthy and my site is partly devoted to tracking current events and developments within my niche. Most of the time, however, I do “blog for the ages”.
(3) is more of a pet peeve. I don’t mind so much if an author doesn’t say who they are. I DO hate it when the author is this egotistical, overbearing jackass who includes a blown-up head-shot of their ugly puss in every single post and their name is the biggest thing on the page and repeated twelve times. People like this are trying to make celebrities of themselves, to the point where it is assumed that their content is a nil consideration. Yes, I’m looking at you, professional bloggers posting under the umbrella of some mega-corporation.
So, I’ve been avoiding including too much data about me, because I don’t want to turn my audience off with too much egocentric posturing. I assume people are there for the content, not to kiss my feet.
But thanks to your insight, I will resolve to include one (1) tasteful “about me” link to a simple bio, for people who just gotta know.
Yes! Yes! Yes! I agree with all your points. Except for no.8. If it’s a celebrity blog, then as a fan would lap up whatever you talk about yourself.
I have been making satirical swipe at meta-blogggers and meta-blogging in my blog. Making jokes at bloggers and bloging is my niche. I find them a BORE. Yakking the same useless, no-brainer tips post after post. Of course there are some new and useful blogging tips, but that’s far and few.
Love it. Especially meta-blogging.
Thanks for the great read.
Dj vu! I could have sworn I read this exact list before. The part about the top(n) lists and comments seems especially familiar. Have you posted this before ?
You don’t need comments to have a successful blog. You don’t need comments to have a successful blog. You don’t need comments to have a successful blog.
Who reads a blog where the comments are more interesting than the content!? Not me. Not anyone. That’s silly talk. Come on now.
If blogging about blogging (meta-blogging) is so boring, yet you wrote about it! I suspect you find it at least a little intriguing or else you wouldn’t have made this post.
The problem I find frustrating with blogs is that many just generate too much noise. If you are posting more than once a day, I would take a serious look at how useful each post actually is to your readers.
I read a dozen or more blogs each day, and really don’t care for your “daily links” or other superfolous posts. I think Coding Horror is great in this respect with its one post per day and each is usually of high quality.
Ah, my tag cloud has been forever immortalized on coding horror. I actually agree with you, I never cared for tag clouds. It was only until 2 weeks ago I started playing with WordPress trunk and its built-in tagging support which I used to turn my categories into tags. But yeah, I should find a better way to display them.
Regarding:
The Useless Calendar Widget: I couldn’t agree more. I actually author a blogging application (Google Battle Blog if you’re curious) and made a point to specifically avoid the calendar on the very premise you assert. I can’t remember the last time I’ve actually been interested in the month and day someone posted. A calendar is a left over from the days when the novelty of the blog was the daily accumulation of content and not its substance. Blogs have since evolved. Nowadays people who hit a blog and bother to delve into it beyond the latest page of postings are far more likely to be topocentric about it.
Random Images Arbitrarily Inserted In Text: I disagree with this one. By contrast I absolutely cannot stand a text-only blog. Text-heavy blogs are a waste of the medium. A text-heavy blog is basically a web based e-mail message one might as well send to my inbox. Random images are better than none at all. However, I will agree that in every post a random image becomes mechanically obvious. Plus, its total mitigation also depends on what the blog is about and/or who is doing it. As always relevance of content trumps presentation.
This Ain’t Your Diary: Not so fast. Again, it’s about who’s doing the blog and why. What if the blog IS a diary? I think what you really meant to say was that most of us have mundane lives and shouldn’t be attempting to build an audience parlaying every detail of it to the public. Again, the author and context matter. “I got up, brushed my teeth, and jogged around the block” is uninteresting if I blog it today. But if an astronaut on Mars blogs it next week, well, that’s pretty damn interesting. 
The diaried lives of exceptional people in extraordinary circumstances can be extremely compelling. But even then, blogging isn’t necessarily about building an audience so much as it might be about self-expression. Blogging for money and audience are actually relatively new motivational trends, but far from the original.
Sorry I Haven’t Written in a While: Could not agree more. However, I would also disagree that the way to correct this is to “write more”. Writing to fill a blog can lead to thin content. Every blog has its own pace and it is completely valid to only post when something interesting happens - depending on the purpose or reflection of the blog. RSS in particular, which helps to effectively forget about a blog until it updates, helps with this logic.
Mindless Link Propagation: I agree with this one, too, but also only to an extent. Propagating actually has two useful functions. One, to, solidify the philosophical viewpoint of the blog’s author without re-inventing content. And two, to push a viewpoint across the internet that may not otherwise get pushed by the mainstream media. We haven’t really had our “Pentagon Papers” of the blogosphere just yet, but we will eventually, and propagation and mirroring will be critical to making sure that information is provided with redundancy. We don’t want to fall into the trap of such a thing as a “blogging leader” because, really, that deflates the medium and returns our mindset to a sort network television comfort zone. Be wary.