Ikaro

Maintaining a blog easily, and then a relevant web site, is very important as you can guarantee a good quality and continuity in the updates.

What follows here are not real rules but just few simple considerations as a result of a long lasting experience and publications of several articles on the subject.

Now I want to share my knowledge with you:

1. No news is too old

The fancy we have in longing for posting original news is the main stress cause for blog abandon. In reality no article and no news is too old for any blog, as netsurfers are many, with different experiences, cultures, interests. So, those news we consider old and not interesting, could be otherwise very interesting for many readers of that blog. Imagine 10 million people that daily look for news and information. If we consider an information useless, it can be instead very interesting for at least 10% of those visitors. This means that you can have 1 million readers easily, on a “ready” subject.

Practically speaking, one of Ikaro most commonly read article is one written in August 2005: “ADSL without telephone”. For me, and particularly for wired people, we are speaking about a sort of prehistorical subject, as we are currently dealing with subjects as Wi-max, hdspa  and advanced technologies. However, I realize that the reality is a different one as many people don’t know yet of the possibility of an internet line without a fixed line. And many are those still searching for this kind of information on the net.

Then, think of the quantity of readers you can lose whenever you leave out some not-interesting or too old (in your opinion) subjects. Again, think of how many posts you could write and the number of potential visitors you could get without searching on Digg or on thousands of feeds at the same time.

2. Don’t confuse duplicate contents with similar subjects

Another problem comes from the will of speaking about software or any other particular service not already discussed in other blogs.

Writing posts about a product already met doesn’t mean creating a duplicate content. You can write about it using your own words and experience, whatever subject it is: Voip, HTML editor, a Web 2.0 service or any other.

I usually don’t look for reviews about services or products, instead I prefer to share other users’ personal experiences about those products, as they are more reliable for a real idea on quality levels. Sharing our own experiences, even if they are similar one to the other, will certainly give an added value to the subject, maybe absent in other articles.

How many software do you have on your PC? How many Social Networking portals do you use to share your information? Which programs? Here you have an idea of some subjects you can deal with for six months at least.

3. A blog must be updated once a day? False!

Of course that would be perfect. However, it will be possible only one day when we maybe could work on it full time. But writing a post daily or three times a week doesn’t make any difference for readers or search engines. Our need of letting our site appear better than others isn’t satisfied by the updating frequency but by the information quality.

The striking thing is that the boom this site had coincided to 8/10 days periods inactivity.

4. Schedule posts

I don’t know if you agree with me, but my love for writing is determinant for an article good quality. Our enthusiasm transmits energy to the post and this is felt by most of readers. So the main rule is: don’t write if you are not in the mood.

Recently I started writing two or three articles one after the other with scheduled dates so that they are published in fixed days. This allows me to write only whenever I want to and then I am trouble-free about this.

5. Don’t care about Trolls

If we compare Internet to Tolkien’s Midway Land and bloggers, hackers, sem (and more) to the different beings living on it, Trolls would be the most dull, annoying and useless beings of this fairy world.

A Troll is the one that comments, provokes and irritates other users for the idle pleasure of doing it. Recently Trolls are slightly changing their bahaviour, as they constantly have the compulsive need of clicking on “no” in any news that are posted on Social News portals.

It doesn’t exist a particular reason for this behaviour –maybe they even don’t know why – but if in the net someone provokes and offends you for your contents or comments, you should imagine him as if he was clammy, quite ugly and pimply, playing hide-and-seek behind his monitor while his mother is preparing the soup for him. And suddenly you will lose the wish to reply him. Your reactions are his food: DON’T feed him!

A Troll ignored for a long time will definitely disappear for spontaneous combustion.

[Photo Credit: Charles Thompson]