When I started blogging 5 years ago, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I thought I was just publishing words on the internet. And it turns out I was right.
One thing that most bloggers crave is recognition. This can be on a very small scale (maybe just a couple of readers and the odd comment every month) or it can be a lot grander. Start a blog today and your name could be on the lips of the world's media by the middle of next week, maybe even with a best selling book to your name by Christmas. It's all just a matter of your raw talent being noticed, your opinions heeded and your creative skill recognised. Because bloggers are the new creative powerhouse, aren't they, and their arguments can bring down governments. Blogging is the beating heart at the epicentre of the 2.0 revolution. Except, as we all know, it doesn't really work like that.
If you want your blog to be recognised, you need to provide original content. It's no good just regurgitating funny stories from the newspapers, or linking to all the same new gadgets as everyone else, or endlessly mouthing off about your journey to work. You need something fresh, something new, something different. This is quite difficult to achieve. Virtually every blogpost that could be written already has been, especially on key topics like climate change, Iraq and kittens. But there's always a new angle if you look hard enough, and originality always shines through. I try hard to keep as much of my blog as original as possible. I like to get out there and explore London for myself. I don't sit around waiting for speculative press releases to arrive in my inbox and then copy them. My voice cannot be bought. Plus I'm not afraid to go wildly off-topic sometimes, or to devote an entire week to a topic of minority interest. I enjoy being experimental, and I love playing around with the conventions of presentation and formatting. I don't think there's another blog on the internet quite like mine (and if there is I'd love to read it, so do tell me where it is).
If you want your blog to be recognised, you need to write regularly. This doesn't necessarily mean several times a day, or even several times a week, but you do need to post new content regularly enough to ensure that potential readers don't walk away. If they're going to make the effort to come and see you, you need the dedication to talk back to them. They'll forgive you a fortnight's holiday incommunicado. They won't desert in droves if you fail to post a 1000 word essay tomorrow morning. They'll even come back after a month of nothing much while you concentrate on having a life. But start apologising for your long breaks, or announcing that you're off on a "hiatus" until the muse returns, and there'll soon be nigh nobody left reading. I try exceptionally hard to blog regularly. I like to post something of substance every day, without fail, and I almost always succeed. It's a ridiculous self-imposed target I know, but I like a challenge. My daily deadline forces me to be both creative and current, and if I've not got something up online by 7am-ish on a weekday morning I feel as though I've somehow failed. Daily blogging isn't for everyone I know, but for me it's the perfect motivational tool.
If you want your blog to be recognised, you need your own niche. It really helps if people can sum up your raison d'être in a single short phrase. That blog about Arsenal, the one by the ambulance driver, the girl who writes about rampant sex, the outpourings of a single-minded political pedant. If you have your own niche, like-minded souls will gravitate towards you. Be distinctive, and you're more likely to get yourself noticed. It's much harder to make a name for yourself if your blog is more of a scattergun affair - a bit of family life one day, a news review the next and then a week of holiday photos. If being popular matters to you, prepare to make a tough decision about which of your diverse interests you should focus on and which can be safely sidelined. My blog isn't easily pigeonholed. Sure I write a lot about London, but actually I write about London for well under half of the time. I love unpredictability, and you lot never quite know what I'll be blogging about here next week (or even, most of the time, tomorrow morning). I'm not afraid to publish a simple list of links one day, followed by a sudden outburst of unlabelled irony the next, and then a whole week of posts on some completely off-the-wall theme. Mine is "the blog that writes quite a bit about London but also about other places and telly and society and music and quizzes and life and stuff". It makes for a fascinating mix, I hope, but it's not a catchy one-line theme. I shall never be a marketable success while I remain unclassifiable. And hurrah for that.
But if you want your blog to have influence, then I'm afraid you are sadly deluded. There were (at the last count) approximately 100 million different blogs out there, each clamouring for recognition in an increasingly crowded electronic arena. Your blog is nothing but an insignificant pebble on the online beach, casting an unnoticed ripple across the face of the internet. No blog ever single-handedly improved teenage behaviour on public transport, or spawned a successful TV series, or brought a government to its knees. Even blogs with ten thousand visitors a day or their own book deal go unnoticed and unregarded by the overwhelming majority of society. My Mum has never read your blog, and my next door neighbour doesn't even know you exist. No matter how original your content, no matter how regular your posting and no matter how well-defined your niche, divide by 100 million and the number of people who give a damn about your blog is as near to zero as makes no odds. Get used to it.
