About Pages | I'm Just Sharing

10 Things People Do Wrong Concerning Blogs

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 25, 2011

Often when I write one of these types of posts it seems like I’m picking on one particular group of some kind. Today this is a little bit different. I’m picking on a group, but the group isn’t as specified except for one thing; it concerns blogs. And it’s what I see “people”, and when you see what I’ve written you’ll understand why I went that route, doing, well, wrong, or badly, or whatever; just not good. lol Here we go.

1. If you’re not trying to live what you write about then you’re wasting your time blogging. Now, that sounds harsh, but I’ll tell you what I mean. Right now, if you look to the right of this post you’ll see a post I wrote on my business blog about “trust leadership”. In that post I highlight 9 blogs I visited on Sunday. I found it interesting that all of those blogs talked about leadership in some fashion, some of them talked about building trust, yet 8 of them moderate comments, one of them adding captcha to the mix. To me you reap what you sow, and if you’re telling people up front that you don’t trust them, then why should they trust your content?

2. Your blog platform is, well, lousy. Of course this is just my belief, and for once I’m not talking about different commenting systems. Lately I see a proliferation of blogs on places such as Typepad, Tumblr, and other sites like these. I don’t count these as regular blogging platforms, although I know the Typepad people will say it is. Any platform that begins by pretty much telling me if I don’t sign into it you’re not going to honor things from outside such as Gravatar, and that you’re not going to send me messages if I comment unless I sign in (I’m not talking about a different comment system, but in this case it’s a part of the site) then it’s a lousy platform. As for Tumblr, it seems to be set up for instant messaging thoughts; in other words, you’re thinking “kill my landlord, kill my landlord” and thus you say it. Or you saw an image of puppies being cut up and you thought it was neat so you posted it. And the comments you get back are “neat”, “wow”, “cruel”… If that’s basically what’s being promoted it’s a lousy platform.

3. You leave lousy comments. Okay, this one I’ve touched upon before, but in this instance I’m not talking about people having to write great comments, and I’m not talking about spam. I’m talking about people who leave comments that never address what the topic is about. Sure, some of them might mean well, but if it doesn’t advance the conversation then what’s the point? Of course there are times when one can be funny with a one liner that actually pertains to the content, and if you’ve built up that type of equity with the blog writer then it’s fine. And if I put up one of my Muppet posts I really don’t expect anything other than “I love/hate the Muppets”; course, if you hate the Muppets you’re a cruel person.

4. You don’t at least try to do a good job of writing your blog posts on a regular basis. I think I’ve written only one post in all these years that I should have checked over before I put it out, and that was when I used my Dragon software without going back to read everything. None of us are perfect, thank goodness, but most of us are pretty good. If we invite people into our space the very least we can do is have a nice place for them to sit.

5. Don’t leave “please contact me” comments on blog posts. The only time one can validate that is if the person who owns the blog hasn’t given you any contact information anywhere else, and if you as a blogger hasn’t put an email address somewhere on your blog so people can contact you, do it now. I have this type of thing happen to me all the time when people want to write guest posts or contact me for some other reason, but I have an About page on every blog that has at least an email address that you can reach me at.

6. If you read any of the “page” information that people have let instructions on make sure you read it if you have any questions. Of course most people will say they don’t have questions, but sometimes they do. If someone has written a comment policy it probably means you should read it if you’re thinking about leaving a fake name or one of those keyword names to see if the person whose blog it is likes that sort of thing. If not, you may find your comment gone or that you’ve irked the blog writer.

7. Let me expound on the “information” part of pages. I have a high number of people that want to either write guest posts for me or buy advertising on my finance blog. I created a page where I tell people which email address to write me at AND to use my name; if my name isn’t in the email it tells me you didn’t read what I had to say. It’s very simple to follow, and any time I get an email without my name on it I just delete it without reading it. Could I be missing something? Yes, but if you don’t stand by your standards then why have any?

8. By the way, if you’ve written any “pages” that you hope people will see, at least make sure they’re understandable so you don’t confuse people. There shouldn’t be any question as to how you want people to act in your space if you’ve taken the time to put something together.

9. Be nice. So far I’ve popped on some things I don’t like. Just asking, but in saying what I’ve said, have I been anything but nice? I always figure there’s a way to get a gripe across and still be nice. One doesn’t have to be too forward. One doesn’t have to use bad language. One doesn’t have to name call. Yeah, there are things that irritate me, but anyone you meet will tell you I’m a nice guy and, in my own way, a straight shooter. When I work directly with people in more of a coaching or training role, I give them options of things to do and my belief on the consequences of those actions rather than just tell them what to do. If someone asks me an opinion and I know they’re going to disagree (yeah, I often already know that) I’ll rarely be forward and tell them that, unless it’s the only way to get them to leave me alone (here I’m talking about things like religion; don’t go there with me). I want to be treated nice and courteous, and Dr. Phil says you teach people how to treat you by your actions. Yes, I watch Dr. Phil. lol

10. Guest posting; give your best and then try to give something different. I just wrote a guest post for someone I know locally. She said I could write on anything. I took a look through her blog to see the types of things she wrote about, then I wrote this post titled Why I Call Out “Isms”. One of her passions is the rights of others, and I tend to agree with her on this. In my mind one doesn’t “mail in” a guest post. You give it your all, try to turn it into something you might not always do for yourself, and go that extra route. I hope you check it out to see what I mean. It’s a topic I might write about here every once in awhile, but it’s not the type of post I’d write here; at least I don’t think it is.

And there you go; I bet you thought I wouldn’t be able to come up with 10, did you? So, share your thoughts, as always; after all, if I didn’t want to hear them, I wouldn’t put them out there.

Blogging | 26 Comments

Some Random Thoughts

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 20, 2009

I won’t be doing this all that often, but I’ve had some random thoughts that I wanted to put out there, mainly to get them off my chest, but to see what you think about them. More personal stuff, but let’s see where it all goes.

I’m wondering if it’s time to change how we treat certain criminal acts. Most of the time people are sent to jail for what I deem are more emotional acts than criminal acts. Does it really behoove us to put someone in jail for 10 to 25 years on a first time drunk driving offense that kills someone, or putting someone in jail for 3 to 5 years for marijuana possession? I’m not saying don’t punish them in some fashion, but it’s costly putting these folks in with the really, really bad guys. There has to be options that still punish, but make these people still contribute something to society, and potential victims, in other ways, doesn’t it?

Also, something different has to be done with released sexual predators. Right now, even if they serve their entire sentence, they’re harassed wherever they go when released, can’t get jobs, can’t live here or there, and thus what options do they really have outside of prison? Once again, not saying we don’t punish these people for their crimes, but there has to be a better way of handling this issue.

In New York, Governor Patterson is taking heat from many sides because he’s proposed cutting different types of programs across the board, and taxing this thing or that thing that someone else determines they don’t like. There are even commercials being produced against him from different organizations. Thing is, no one wants to be affected, but no one has offered up anyone else for cuts, or come up with another way to do things. Everyone always wants to protect their own piece of the pie, but when everyone’s hurting, no one deserves to be protected way more than anyone else. Fairness has to be maintained in some way. Isn’t it time people who decide to complain about something offer up something else as a legitimate alternative?

The same goes for President Obama. He’s bee in office exactly two months, and everyone feels he should have solved every problem in the world, let alone the United States, that took 8 years to mess up. No one can truthfully say he hasn’t reached out to the other party, yet they’ve found that, for the first time in eight years, they can bind together almost unanimously to try to upset the process; so much for bipartisanship. Get over it, Republicans; you lost the election, and your popularity as a party is tumbling drastically as you subconsciously have appointed Rush Limbarf as the leader of your party. The Republican party is quickly heading towards separating into a southern states versus everyone else who wants to be considered as a Republican, and, if no one’s been paying attention, that’s happened before in history; anyone remember the Federalist party? For that matter anyone remember that many of today’s southern Republicans used to be democrats? You’re close to becoming a non-entity, like religion; anyone seen the stats on religion in America lately? Those who consider themselves as being part of a religion is as close to becoming a minority as it can get; give it ten more years. Both of y’all better get it together, or you’ll be, as the original Star Trek alluded to, “dunseled”.

What’s with this rash of two new sets of killers, the ones who decide to take out a bunch of people before offing themselves, and these guys who decide their entire families must be killed before offing themselves? Is there really anyone left who can legitimately say they don’t believe gun control is a good thing? Is anyone else getting tired of hearing “he was so quiet” when they really mean “he was that weird kid who sat all by himself because people picked on him”? Anyone notice it’s always men? I’m not in school, but someone’s not paying attention to what’s going on anymore, and parents are as much to blame for not knowing what’s going on with their kids as anyone, in my opinion. I’m thinking we need more Boys and Girls Clubs, and some more proactive punishment against bullies. Using the excuse “they’re just acting like kids” isn’t going to get it done anymore.

And, as a sidebar gripe, what’s with the ones who keep forgetting that babies aren’t Sketch-o-Matics and try to shake them quiet (and they end up quiet for good)? How did this get to be a modern phenomenon, and who started this mess, since we all believe that this type of behavior is learned?

Isn’t it about time that these men who believe hitting women is a good thing (yeah, it’s their fault because they made you mad; punks) should be getting a little bit of “an eye for an eye” and be put in a lineup of all women to be slapped and kicked, like a fraternity initiation? By the way, I’m against that mess also, as more and more young adults, who must have a great sense of need to put themselves through stupid mess like that, are getting themselves either killed or seriously hurt? Hazing; a fancy word for bullying.

I doubt the show Entertainment Tonight goes around the world, but am I the only one who noticed, and was disappointed, that they wouldn’t even use the name of one of the competitors on their show, Nancy O’Dell, who was a competitor on Dancing With The Stars (no, I don’t watch it), just because she works for a competing show? If she hadn’t gotten hurt and had made it into the final group of competitors, would they have just stopped covering the show in its entirety? And, since she’s going to be up for competing on the next reiteration of the show, will they continue this stupidity?

Has anyone really been paying attention to the weather? Europe had some very nasty weather this winter; hurricanes and typhoons are getting stronger and coming more often; some areas have more drought, some areas have more floods; we’re hearing of more firestorms than ever before; tornadoes have lost their mind! Does anyone who’s under the age of 40 other than Elizabeth Hasselbeck really believe global warming isn’t upon us? Have you heard how much glaciers have receded, how much ice has withdrawn from both Greenland and Iceland, lakes and some rivers have disappeared in Russia, and there’s actually land being seen in Antarctica and the North Pole? Have you heard that not only is the hole in the ozone getting bigger, but there’s a second one forming? Incidences of skin cancer are jumping, folks; I hope we’re not too late to save the environment from catastrophe.

I’m going to make a case that there’s something happening with our foods that are changing humans in interesting ways. Right now, the average height for women is 5′ 5 1/2″. In 1981, the average height for women was 5′ 3 1/2″. At the turn of the 20th century, the average height for women was 5′ even. The average height for men is now 5′ 10″; back in 1981, it was 5′ 8 1/2″. At the turn of the 20th century, the average height for men was 5′ 4″. There are women who are suffering from bone loss who eat lots of vegetables, yet don’t seem to get any Vitamin D from it. There are higher incidences of people with heart problems and clogged arteries now, yet at the beginning of the 20th century they ate more fat than we do now and weighed less, had fewer heart ailments, and little illnesses related to cholesterol problems. Yet, on average we live longer. We’re changing at a much faster rate as far as evolution goes than Darwin ever predicted. At 6′ 1/2″, I used to be considered tall; now there are 14 and 15 year old girls taller than me. It’s unnatural what’s going on, but I don’t know enough about biology or nutrition to have an answer as to why. But it’s somewhat scary if you ask me.

And finally, one back to what we usually talk about. I’ve written comments on fewer blogs lately, but it’s not because I have less to say. It’s because I’ve been taking a little bit more time lately in looking at people’s blogs and some of the products they market, because I figure everyone’s taken time to put some of these things up, so why not stop and take a look at some of them. I’m still wondering how many of you are actually taking time to check out other people’s about pages. Many of us want to make money, and we want people to visit our blogs and read what we have to say. I’m realizing that, even with all the content I’m putting out there, I’m not honoring other people if I don’t take some time to at least look at what they’re doing and putting up. For instance, how many of you have noticed the types of things Sire has at the bottom of his Wassup Blog (though lots of things change, I noticed something there that I’m thinking my wife might like)? Or even a site like Uber Affiliate, who has things he’s advertising that look like a lot of what we have, but every ad he has is something I’ve never seen elsewhere before (at least I don’t remember it)? In the end, it is supposed to be all about us, or can we still learn something by seeing what someone else has on their site?

Why is there so much hate towards poor people? How come not enough people commented on this post on poverty on Blog Action Day? I hate that, whenever anyone talks about either welfare or Medicaid that suddenly it’s open season on the poor. People are always saying that poor people should just get jobs and go to work. How smug are some of you feeling now that unemployment is moving towards an all time high? How many people can care for their families in today’s world when minimum wage is only $6.55 an hour, especially if they have kids? If they were allowed to work and still get some assistance, even only another $2.50 an hour from the government, they might have a realistic chance at a basis living in America, but those aren’t the rules? Instead of talking about welfare mothers, why not come up with a way to train them and have daycare so they can leave their kids with someone competent, learn a nice job skill that may pay them more money, then help them find work, instead of deriding them? And, by the way, for those who use “welfare mothers” and think of minorities first, 2/3rds of all welfare mothers in America are white.

I think I’ve ranted enough. These are short takes on topics that I could probably expound on for a long time, but we don’t need to go there. I’m interested in your thoughts, believe it or not, because, though I have my opinions, I know some of you have other opinions, or things you’d like to say. I’m betting this one will be a spammer’s dream; don’t worry, I’ll eliminate all of it.