The Rise and Sprawl sprawls all.

Yesterday I went to a blogging workshop held by Robert Galston, author of The Rise and Sprawl. The Rise and Sprawl is a Winnipeg blog dedicated to heritage preservation and pertaining issues in the local urban. Galston's blog has been mentioned and referenced numerous times in both the Winnipeg free press and globe and mail. I thought I would do a brief outline of some of the things he talked about for my fellow bloggers and anyone else interested.

Getting people to read

• Know that that on average 50% of the people that read blogs are themselves, bloggers. The rest are regular people and Google feed fetchers. Try and form community's with other bloggers by linking to and commenting on things that interest you.

• Follow up on topics that get commented on. Not to long ago I wrote a post about originality in literature and general western culture. This post received two opinion based comments which for some reason I decided not to respond to. This was not the correct thing to do...
  

• Use Google Anlytics to figure out where you hits are coming from and who is reading.

• Write more, write consistently. People don't read blogs that don't update.

• Focus brings readers but only comes with experience and practice. Graeme's blog is far more focused then mine. He has general topics which his potential audience can expect to hear about. My blog has been a mish mash of scattered idea. It takes time to find your voice and this is something that I really need to work on.
  

• Don't quit. On average most bloggers quit or start a new blog after the second year. Robert mentioned that he is embarrassed of the things he wrote when he first started out. This is part of the learning process. Hating your old writing is concrete evidence that you have improved.

Writing

• When you are uncertain of facts or lack references use speculative language like a real journalist.

• On average, Robert spends about an hour on every piece and posts about three times a week. The question of how much time you should put into composition is something only you can answer. As far as drafting goes, spell check and a quick read over seems like the general consensus.

Content

• Unless you are a power blogger, your job is not to report but rather to commentate. Information is less important then opinion and new ideas.

• Blogging is the easiest form of publishing. That is probably why you do it. Try and keep this in mind.

• Use links, they validate ideas.

• People have this strange tendency to feel that sitting alone in a cold basement behind a keyboard gives them some kind of sumpreme authority. This leads to outlandish comments and ideas that would never be mentioned or published anywhere.
  

That's about it. Hopefully someone will find something useful in there. I was going to briefly talk about the blogging vs mainstream media war but I think I will save that for another post. Or just not write about it at all...