Jan 11 2008
Things I Done Right
I’ve noticed that, during the course of being a blogger, there are a few things I have done correctly to help my blog along. The most prominent (to me) is the name of my blog. All About Me - And Then Some. I have seen other blogs with similar names, but here’s what I think is right with this name.
1. It is obvious from the title that it is a personal blog, but it also leaves open the possibility that I might actually talk about a subject other than myself. The title is relevant and stays relevant as my blog grows and changes over the years. Since I don’t think I’ll ever be a pro blogger with a specific niche, this works very well for me.
2. It’s at the beginning of the alphabet. Not the total beginning, since other blog names do come before me, but if people put me on their blogrolls by the title of my blog, then I’m up near the top. Now when cruising other people’s blogrolls, I’ll start at the top and work my way down, but very often I run out of steam by the time I get to the M’s. Consequently, this gives me more traffic by blogroll surfing than “Mary’s Blog” or something like that. So that makes me an “A” blogger. Ha, ha!
3. Except for the title of this post (and a few other rare exceptions), I never forgot what I learned in my English classes, specifically the writing classes. Many pros say this, and I am in total agreement - a little bit of good grammar goes a long way. The way kids text these days, with all their “ur” for your and 2 for two, to, or too, is just really annoying for those of us who learned to spell from weekly spelling lists, not telephone keypads.
4. I remembered what I learned by osmosis from working as a receptionist at a graphic design firm. For over two years, I was surrounded by people who not only appreciated, but were huge fans of good design. It has turned me into a nit-picking design freak. At work, a flyer advertising a Weight Watchers 10 week session was distributed, and it only took me a few seconds to pick out the two biggest design flaws in it. Good design is as such that one does not need to think about it. My new blog is not perfect, at least as far as I’m concerned, but I’m gonna get myself a book and try to tweak it to my satisfaction.
Now, things I done bad
I started on Blogger. This wasn’t a fatal move in itself - it did allow me to learn about blogging, html, css, and of course make lots of blogger friends, all for free. But it was limiting too - I couldn’t do all the things I wanted to do, and I didn’t have control of my content.
I just didn’t know lots of stuff. Again, this is not a fatal flaw because I eagerly learned what I needed to know rather than claiming ignorance. I could have just picked a standard template, left the colors as they were, and typed some stuff in the box and hit “Post.” I might have even had a halfway decent blog that way because my content rocks (It’s my blog, so I can say that). But it still would have looked like all the others. I need to be unique, even if just in my tiny way. So, I learned and did just that. You might never see a totally built from scratch by me template and design on here, but I intend to learn enough about wordpress to know what to change if something is bugging me or I just need a tiny change.
As time goes on and I see how well the things I done right work for me, I’m really glad that I had the foresight dumb luck to make the decisions I did, because I didn’t totally screw myself and was able to build myself quite the decent little blog.
Maybe I should change my blog’s name to AAAAAAAAAAAAA.
I knew I would get a comment to that effect when I wrote this post. Personally, I think The World of Stuff works pretty well. They say you can’t judge a book by its title, and that is certainly true for blogs as well. A nice, catchy title like yours (and hopefully mine) will entice people to click on the link. That’s how I found your blog, though I don’t know where exactly I found it.
When I thought of the name “The World of Stuff,” I didn’t have a blog in mind at all (and, indeed, The World of Stuff wasn’t really a blog for its first few months of existence), which proves, as you said, how a good name is versatile.
I like “All About Me - And Then Some” because the “and then some” makes it sound vaguely nonsensical: like you’re telling all about you and then telling other things that are supposedly about you but aren’t. It’s a subtle extra connotation, I think.
I seem to recall you found my blog from Thoughts of a Crazy Redhead. I have a habit of asking people how they found out about my site.
“Vaguely nonsensical” - that’s me, pretty much. But it’s not as catchy a blog title.