I thought about a number of different topics for my landmark 100th blog post. First, I was going to do a rundown of the top contenders for Game of the Year and then select my choice. (Hint: It starts with "Mass" and ends with "Effect".) I decided that was overdone and boring. Who really cares what my choice for Game of the Year is?



My second thought was to do a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style blog that would have my readers in the role of an assassin named "Al'Seq'uel de Casheeny", patterned after Assassin's Creed, only you are out to murder the CNET CEO in retaliation for Jeff Gerstmann getting fired. It would be three parts but the second two parts wouldn't be announced until everyone had read through the entirety of the first part. (Take THAT Ubisoft! Damned scam artists...)



Then I realized that not only was that a hell of a lot more work than I wanted to put in, but it would probably get me banned permanently from the site. (Not a desirable outcome.) Er...now would be a good time to mention that this is a two-part blog post, so if you aren't willing to hang with me for two whole blog posts, you can stop reading now and get 100% of your money back. My third choice was to do a "Blog about nothing", patterned after the old "Seinfeld" TV show, where I would write about absolutely nothing of importance but do it in a witty, entertaining way. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that there are, literally, thousands of blogs out in the webspace that attempt this. The landfills of the Internet are filled with the remains of blog writers who thought they were wittier and more entertaining than they actually are. And that's when the topic for this blog post hit me: I would write a blog about how to start a blog, build a readership, and actually get your hard work read and commented upon. With that in mind, here are ten suggestions to help you create a blog and gain a readership. Five of these suggestions will be things you should do, and five will be things you should try and avoid.

As you read, keep in mind these suggestions are intended to help you get readers beyond just your friends and family, who probably won't care if you break each and every one of these suggestions. Other people will. 1. Don't make the mistake of thinking everyone else finds you as fascinating as you find yourself. (A.K.A. "You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.") If I had to come up with a single "Golden Rule of Blogging" this would be the one I would choose. The number one mistake that I see beginning bloggers make is to make the mistake of thinking that other people find you as fascinating as you find yourself to be. Put another way, try and remember that if people wanted to view a bunch of self-centered people writing about themselves then they'd go visit Live Journal.

Sure it is your blog and you can write about whatever the hell you want, but just like there is no law saying you can't have ninety percent of your written content be dedicated to what's happening in your day-to-day life, there is also no law saying that anyone other than your mother have to actually read what you write. Pick topics and write about things other than you personally. They can and should include your perspective on the topics you pick, but you shouldn't be the topic constantly. Writing a blog about you personally once in a while is fine. It humanizes you and helps people identify with your perspective. Do it too often though and people will slowly stop reading. After all, while you may by proud that you finally made it to "Level 20: Metal Slime" on Gamespot or wrote your 1000th forum post, chances are nobody else cares. 2. Don't forget that people judge you online based on your grammar and spelling. It is a sad but true fact that if you use bad grammar, sloppy punctuation, and terrible spelling online then intelligent people are going to look down on you. If you want to be taken seriously, then you have to put in enough effort to look and sound intelligent. It doesn't matter how correct your opinion might be if you communicate it by writing at the same level as a ten year old. Once again, it is your blog and you can sound like a moronic gorilla if you want to. However, if you want people to take what you write seriously then you have to actually look intelligent. Think of each blog you write like it is a job interview except instead of one person sitting across the table listening to you, it is a thousand people. Just like you wouldn't go to a job interview looking like a flood victim, don't write a blog that looks like your cat walked back and forth across your keyboard while you were typing it. 3. Don't overuse smilies. :) This relates to point number 2 up above. Think of smilies as a crutch to convey the emotional feeling that you are trying to get across. Good writing doesn't require them. If your thoughts are clear and well written, then you don't need the smilies to get the desired emotional connection communicated. It just comes through based on how you word what you are trying to say. Excessive use of smilies will make people question your intellectual "heft" so to speak. After all, when was the last time you saw a professionally written game review that was filled with smilies?

4. Don't take things personally. This one may seem obvious to some readers but it deserves mentioning. If someone disagrees with something that you write, then don't take it personally. If you can't help it and you do take their disagreement personally, then you should hold off on replying to them until you're calmed down.

If you write a blog about how magnificent Oblivion was and how much it deserved to win Gamespot's Game of the Year for 2006 in place of Gears of War and someone disagrees with you, let them have their opinion. You may consider them painfully misguided and guilty of some sort of congenital stupidity or the victim of questionable parentage, but if you actually say all of these things then you're probably going to lose a reader. (Did you notice how I didn't need to use a smiley to convey the fact that I'm joking?) Instead of attacking the person, attack the arguments. Explain the faults of Gears of War or the virtues of Oblivion. Point out the objective, non-emotional criteria that makes one a superior game than the other. Also remember that sometimes you won't get to agreement and you'll just have to agree to let the other person be wrong. This advice also applies to other things. If people aren't coming to read your blog, the very worst thing you can do is to write a blog complaining about how nobody reads your blogs. This is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, nobody cares that your blog isn't getting the attention it deserves. Second, unless somebody is a buddy of yours (in which case they are probably already reading your blog) then a blog devoted to how mean people are for not reading you isn't going to go over very well. Third, you've broken the Golden Rule of Blogging that I laid out as my very first suggestion. 5. Don't overuse formatting. This one has the same logic behind it as smilies. Good writing will not require excessive amounts of formatting to convey the emotional feel of what you are trying to communicate. Formatting is like using swear words. Excessive use of either robs it of its power. Just like if you say a swear word in every sentence you use then your swearing will lose its shock value and potency, if you constantly are using italics, bold font, large font, underlined font, different colored font or a number of other formatting tricks then when you really want to drive something home, the formatting choice you use won't have enough "macho" to get your intended thrust through. Think of formatting like your writing equivalent of your big finishing move if you were a professional wrestler. If you attempt your finishing move without the proper buildup, then the crowd won't get all excited when you go for it and your opponent will counter it. Let's see here, what other analogies can I use? Well, I haven't used a sexual metaphor in a while. If you go for the formatting too quickly it is like "finishing" too quickly during sex. It won't be nearly as impressive as it is if you pull it out when you really need to. Well, that's it for Part 1. Coming "whenever I feel like it" for Part 2 are my five suggestions for things that you should do when blogging to increase your page views and readership.