Adventures in Mobile Marketing

… that I discovered while reading 1000 posts. What? There’s not 13 listed here? Oh, that’s because I’m super annoyed with…

Enumeration. “Top 3 Blog Annoyances,” “5 steps to easy weight loss”, “52 (I’m not joking) tips for _____.” It is so overdone! And, rarely are there a finite number of whatever you’re writing about. Making up a number just makes you seem like you’re grasping at authority. Focus more energy on making your points easy to read, well-written and direct.

Not doing your research. I’m over people writing a blog post without looking around the blogosphere to see if it’s been written about before. Link to it, then add on a new thought. It brings nothing to the conversation to re-post, re-writing the obvious, or “telling your audience” something they could easily find. It’s all about respecting your audience and contributing to the conversation.

Really long posts (and I mean, unnecessarily long) There is a time and place for long blog posts. Like, very involved stories, or extended, complicated arguments. But beyond the browser pane, and you’ve got to have a good reason. An old writing tip (for novelists) is to delete your first chapter. In this case, perhaps the first two paragraphs. The post usually stands quite well without the long intro. This is the #1 (just to enumerate) newbie error in blog writing- too much, all at once. Span it out.

On that note, I will stop writing this blog post!