99 Thump.

Feedster chose Granny Buttons as 'Feed of the day' today. Blush! I felt like a centipede with a wooden leg, congratulated for its ability to walk, but now not knowing which leg to put forward next!

It's not entirely justified. True, I try to have something to say every day, and put a lot of work into researching and producing follow-up links. But I'm still fumbling my way. I don't have the daily photograph I wanted (I'm still using film and have a dozen films unprocessed, for example). I don't yet do a daily post from the boat, and heaven knows when I'll finally set up the grannybuttons.cam. I'd wanted a few more contacts with the influential waterways people but there are none answering my knock right now.

No matter. I'm the only person with a waterways 'feed' at the moment, so in the Blogdom of the blind, that makes me the one-eyed king. Soon, others will do it and it probably won't be long before I'm No. 99. Or even 'Thump'.

Here's what I think makes for an interesting feed:

1. Use you blog service's 'post continuation' feature, to make the post's preamble conveniently short, in case the post as a whole isn't interesting enough.

2. Try to 'write outside yourself'. That is, observe others rather than write specifically about your own opinions. Try not to be introspective. You aren't Shakespeare; you're probably not even a newspaper columnist, and I don't try to be. Granny Buttons is about the passion of others as much as it is about my own passions.

3. Give a post every day. If people know there's likely to be something every day, they'll subscribe. When I'm away for a day or more, I use the 'Post on ' feature of my blog service to give a delayed post. Here's a secret: My 'Waterways Glossary' is just such a trick! The concept was genuine, and it was needed, but I realised that a post-a-day (rather than a simple web page would: (a) justify a daily post, (b) was something that I could prepare in advance so that it would post itself automatically, and (c) would be the jumping-off point for more observations about the waterways. Plus, I could add interesting, illustrative photographs.

4. Research. You can often just start typing, but if so, then go off browsing and even googling as you are writing. Then explore, find, and cross-check your thoughts on the web. The web's often wrong of course, but use your intuition and common sense.

5. Don't post too often. No more than three posts in a single day, at most. When I subscribe to a feed, my heart sinks if I see someone posting half a dozen posts - or even more - a day. They need to be really special to do that.

6. Link! Do the research, make the effort to find the link. It's not hard. You might not find that obscure, fascinating, special, unusual link, and you might only find a home page. But it's a springboard for the reader. Sometimes I only produce a link to a definition of a quotidian word, but a link can help you read the post, especially if (as here!) there's whimsy in the link.

7. Link again! Links help make your own point more concise, because you can let your link do the explaining. It also helps to make your post look less navel-gazing.

8. Find any chance you can to illustrate with a photo or drawing.

9. Er...

10. That's it!

Comments

[Betsy Devine]

Thanks for having such an enjoyable blog!