PQR

What is it that makes a good blog? What is that keeps people coming back for more? I have given this some thought, and have boiled it down to three letters for easy remembering: PQR (or QPR if you happen to be a fan of that particular football team). Passion, Quality and Regularity. 

Passion. Having a passion for what you write about is something that will shine through your writing. And if some of that passion rubs off on your readers they will be coming back.Having a passion for what you write about will make you go that little bit extra to please your readers, and it will make you feel a little bit better. Just make sure that the passion does not turn into that other p; preaching. Opinions are all well and good – and you should have them, there is no doubt about that – but as soon as you start preaching them, you will start to loose more than you gain.

Quality. Set a standard and keep to it. This does not have to mean that you need to write a newspaper editorial for every entry, but if that is the standard you choose to set for yourself you need to avoid the rambly entries riddled with typos and broken grammar. Make sure to set the standard to something you feel comfortable with: just remember that having something to strive for can be better than setting the bar so low that you have room for laziness.

Regularity. Some blogs update several times a day and some once a week, or even rarer. Both of those models are equally fine (and both have their own set of challenges, namely what can be described as post-spamming and the challenge of keeping readers if one or two posts are missed). Here too is keeping to a norm important: Blog-readers, like everyone else, is a creature of habit – anything to disrupt that habit is considered a negative. To many negatives and we begin to look elsewhere for a more rewarding experience.

Of the three, the P and the R are the two I struggle most with. Passion is so-so. I try my best and sometimes I get it right – other times I sit back and wonder what the heck I was thinking of writing a particular entry. Regular updates is tougher. The first couple of months I had a fairly steady rate of update (a month seen as a whole), then something let slip. And the recent laptop death did not help the situation….

Lately recurring themes, or features, have been popping up in a few of the blogs I read, and I have been considering introducing one of my own. But I really don’t have a good idea what, and could use some ideas and suggestions. (And yes, if you were wondering this whole post has been a writeup for that last bit alone)