Like many people my age, that is, having grown up as a teen in the 80′s, every time I hear a name: “Blah Blah 2″, my mind has to throw in the Electric Boogaloo for good measure. Such are the pitfalls of a society that runs on advertising to youths. We end up with Teen Smoking and every sequel being silently subtitled, “Electric Boogaloo”.
Once one starts a blog, one of the first things that must be considered is how often does one publish? Many moons ago, (internet lifetimes are measured in moons, you know) the conventional wisdom was that for a blog to be successful one had to post every day, or at the least every weekday. I don’t think this is the case any more. I don’t even check the few blogs that I read every day. Maybe once a week. Blogs aren’t what they used to be and every poser, I mean person, with a keyboard has one.
That said, I do think it is important to update regularly, and reasonably often. I think 2-3 times a week is good. Maybe even a bit much. I have noticed a lot of people may update once every few weeks to a month (or more). When one does this, I feel you are essentially writing to yourself (like I am now). The point of a blog is to interact with people, so you don’t want to set them aside for long. No one likes to be ignored. Least of all, your fans.
Then again, writing blog posts takes away from the writing time dedicated to the stuff the author/creator/business/schmuck is looking to produce, so I can understand why blogs go unattended for long periods. If you have noting to say, then there’s nothing to say.
To that, I call B.S. In my (lofty/lowly) opinion, if you’re starting a blog, you are saying to your readers, “Hey! I’ve got stuff to say and I’m going to say it for a while.” By blogging once every six weeks, you’re breaking that contract and admitting you’re just not that interesting.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not that interesting either. But fiction is a necessary component to a lot of writing. So I’m going to fake it. If nothing else, it’ll be good practice.
