Well, I'm 40 years old and I've nettled myself for years that I should write some of this crud down. Its time I put on my big boy pants and start blogging.
Any advice for a technophobe in their 40's? I think I want to divide posts between RP advice/commentary and fiction. Not that I'm any good at either mind you. I just figured lots of other people have the courage and conviction, so why not me?
If anyone out there has tips, hints or commentary on blogging and specifically blogging as a gamer, let me hear it. Thanks in advance.
Maybe too early but... bump?
Sign up for a blog host and start posting. Blogger is a good free alternative. Determine your posting frequency and declare it in your opening post so that your followers will know how often to expect content. Once you have your first blog post up, you can consider linking it to your other social media including a Facebook fanpage, youtube channel, twitter account, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+. Once you get all of those sites cross-linked, all you have to do is keep posting and the rest will fall into place.
If you want to start a blog for yourself, then do it. If you want to start a blog with the hope that you will amass a ton of followers who will bask in your wisdom, be prepared for disappointment. The internet is saturated with gaming blogs; everyone has an opinion on various aspects of gaming.
If you want to set yours apart, come up with something somewhat controversial. As it is controversial and against the common wisdom of the day, you'll likely attract people that want to tell you how wrong you are. You may be able to convert some of those people into regular readers after they realize you do have something to offer.
Another way to entice people to keep coming back is to offer them something they can use. Perhaps a random NPC 1x/week or better yet, an encounter that they can plop into their games. If the content you provide is good enough, it may garner repeat visitors.
Lastly, less is more. Long-winded writing analyzing minutia doesn't cater to our ADHD society.
Best of luck.
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The best possible thing you can do (that hasn't already been mentioned) is to have a back log. Start writing in your favorite word processor, and save them as individual blog entries. Once you've got a number of well-written posts (shoot for at LEAST two weeks of content, but it's better if you can generate a month or more), start posting them online using the blog platform of your choice. The backlog will do a couple of things for you:
1) You'll have time to polish the posts (remember the maxim: Everybody Needs An Editor), rather than risk posting late or putting up something poorly done just so that you can maintain your blog schedule. The schedule consistency will make or break your blog in your reader's eyes. The last thing you want is somebody to say, "the post isn't up yet... I'll check back later". They never check back later.
2) If your life circumstances take a turn for the "I don't have time to update", you'll have a safety net equal to your backlog. Many blogging venues even allow automated posting, so all you have to do is set it up and keep the queue full. Then if you're hit by a bus or something, the blog keeps rolling like nothing ever happened and you're free to refill the backlog once you're feeling better. Or even if you just decide to take a vacation. Backlogs remove the pressure of constantly needing to meet deadlines.
Other than having a backlog... just have fun. Nobody is going to read it (I Googled "gaming blog" and got "About 225,000,000 results (0.68 seconds)", so you'd have to be something special to stand out), so don't feel like there's a lot of risk in putting yourself out there. I had a blog for awhile where I just made up random facts about "What Happened On This Day In History". It was awful, but it was fun.
If you *do* want to stand out:
Get a unique domain name. They're cheap and make you look like a professional (rather than just some guy with a Tumblr).
Along the same lines, pay for web hosting. It doesn't have to be fancy, but a dedicated website goes a long way towards that same professional look.
You'll see some folks talk about "Search Engine Optimization" or "SEO". Don't worry about that. Worry about quality content.
Give people something. Have a weekly feature that's essentially an adventure module (or an encounter). Maybe just publish whatever custom content you use for your group (after they've played it, of course). Have an advice column, asking readers to email you their questions (they won't at first... just make stuff up until they do, or have a "I was asked by somebody I know" type of thing until you actually start getting reader questions). Share how you handled common table issues, or what mistakes you made in the past that you learned from. Whatever. Make your readers feel like they're getting something of value by reading your blog. Since you're also posting fiction, you'll want to keep the two separate (just have a schedule with tags, at the bare minimum). Post the fiction on Monday, the advice on Wednesday, the "free" content on Friday (or whatever you end up doing) and keep it consistent. There will be overlap, but I imagine most of your readers will be there for one thing and will only check out the other stuff on a whim. You'll find that one area will be your "strong" suit (i.e. You'll have more hits on the day when the content that people care about is posted).
Use just enough words to say what needs to be said. If you're read this far, you're probably wondering when I'm going to shut up. Don't put your readers in the same position.
And finally: don't be discouraged when you do all these things and still end up with a website that doesn't pay the bills (or even pay to keep itself afloat). It doesn't sound like you're doing it for a shot at the big time, so that shouldn't be a problem.
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Speaking as someone who's failed to keep a regular posting schedule on my own blog, I can attest to the fact that it's vital that you do so. I get much better responses (in terms of views and so on) when I manage to go for a few weeks with regular content getting posted.
Unfortunately I went through some pretty rough patches over the last couple of years, which resulted in me having trouble actually writing anything for a long time.
I'm planning on trying to follow the advice mentioned earlier of having a buffer of a few weeks worth of content ready to go before I start posting again. While I'll still try to write some stuff on the fly in order to stay topical (reviews and so on), having that ready to go stuff there is useful in case I get swamped with work or something, and I wish I'd had someone to tell me that when I started the blog.
Thanks all. I don't have the cashflow at the moment to maintain anything but a free blog right now, looking at Blogpress. I do however get what you're all saying: throw a lot of stuff in WORD right now and then post as needed. I've gone through enough writer's block to know that when inspiration finally shines through you stop everything you can and get writing.
There ARE a lot of gaming blogs out there. I don't think I'll ever manage contraversy; I always end up being the "middle ground" mediator between more extreme gamers. I do think though that I can offer something useful.
If anyone has more comments please, let me know. Also what do you think a doable post schedule is for a middle aged father and husband with 60 hour work weeks?
Lastly, let's not kid ourselves. I'm a mediocre writer at best. I have trouble ending even short stories, I haven't written any decent poetry for a couple years and I've only been paid for ONE freelance job, ever. I'm not looking to get rich and famous here. I have however gotten a couple fans from encounters or ideas I've posted on these boards and I feel like there's still enough folks out there looking for fun, playable content that don't have the time or energy to make it themselves. I guess what it is is that I don't want to be rich or famous, but I would like to be useful.
So I'm not super handy around the house; I have an office job but only some community college; I'm not brilliant or technically minded by ANY stretch of the imagination. I have only one talent that I've ever consistently been recognized for, and most of the time its in conjunction with gaming. So if I have a skill that the universe has put in me, well I think it would be hypocritical not to do anything with it. Especially since I'm raising 2 daughters that I tell over and over again "follow your passion."
So... blogging. Right now I'm toying with Bard's Blender for the title. It's provocative, silly and might just come up in some web searches. Again, any tips or advice is ALWAYS appreciated.
You'd be surprised how quickly "mediocre writer" can turn into "decent writer" and then go even further to "good writer". Just keep writing, and you'll get better. The more you write, the better you'll get.
With that in mind: set an update schedule that works for you. It should be often enough that you get a lot of practice writing, but not so often that you can't keep up with it. I used to have a blog that updated Mon-Fri. It was hard to stay on top of the posts, and I wouldn't recommend that unless you were unemployed and/or found yourself with nothing but freetime. I kept it up for a few years, but I ultimately stopped writing because I was burnt out and had no desire to do it anymore. Quality was suffering, and I found that I *had* to make myself update, rather than I *wanted* to update. Obviously you don't want that.
My advice here? Sit down and think about each actual part you want to write. Playable content? Fiction? Advice? Anecdotes? House rules? Split it into a few separate categories that make sense. That's probably going to be your posting schedule. If it's more than you think you can handle (say you have 6 different categories worth of content), break it down even further. An example:
Monday - Fiction
Thursday - Recap of your last gaming session, with thoughts
Saturday - Gaming Advice
Every other Friday - Mail Call/Answer Questions
Last day of each month - Free Adventure Module!
Try to keep it simple, and make sure you update at least once a week. The example schedule is 3.75 times per week (I think... math is hard and it's not the point). The more you update, the more often people will remember to come back. The less you update, the more time you have to deal with life issues and the longer your backlog will stretch in case of emergency. That might go without saying, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to forget.
And the final bit of advice regarding blogging: all of this is pointless and a waste of time unless you're actually writing. If you haven't started writing yet... do that. Throw a bunch of stuff in Word, and get an idea for the kind of content that you'll actually be creating. Write 12 blog entries. That might sound like a lot... but depending on your schedule, it could be less than a month's worth of content. Once you have 12 posts, write another 12 posts whilst turning your attention to the details of the blog. Once you have 24 posts (total) and an idea for the platform and update schedule, write another 12 posts and start the process of getting the whole thing online. By that point, you'll have 36 posts ready and waiting when the blog goes live. You'll also have 36 posts that you can shop around if you decide to join a team of bloggers to cut down on maintenance costs (if any) and help maintain a site full of awesome content, rather than trying to create a bunch of content on your own. In other words: your options'll open up because you have a bunch of unpublished content already. The world is full of "writers" that have "a novel in their head already" but haven't written anything because "they can't find anybody interested in publishing" or "don't have the time, you know?" or "just aren't sure how to start". Don't be one of them. In the words of the great Nike:
Just Do It.
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I'm fairly comfortable with using WordPress as my blog of choice; they're free, and the various applications seem fairly easy to understand - like you, I'm not interested in prettying things up too much, so the bare-bones layout works fine for me.
That said, some of the greater stylistic options are apparently behind a pay-wall, so it's somewhat irritating that I can't make bullet points look like anything but small arrows, for instance.
The only piece of advice I can offer is to treat your blog like a fun pasttime, rather than a chore. Don't think of blogging as something that you have to do on a set schedule - do it when the spirit moves you, even if that means that it doesn't update for weeks, or even months.
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