Bloging is writing to...

That may sound like an obvious and redundant statement, but after recently discussing this I was amazed by how many people don’t seem to make the connection.

I suppose it all depends on what type of blogs you primarily read. I mostly ether read about writing from writers, or about gaming – from gamers, and yes there is a general  difference in both presentation and style. That’s not to say the writing blogs are always better written. I’ve read some very professional sounding and eloquent gaming blogs. Remember that most gamers, and perhaps especially most of the ones that have a blog, are at least in their mid twenties, and statistically most gamers are above thirty. Not the spotty teenagers writing in text speak that the media would have you believe they are.

I’m sure we all know that Blog is a concatenation of ‘’Web Log” and unfortunately there are bloggers that do exactly that... log their daily endeavours, or lack there off, onto their blog. But that’s no different from the same type of accounts on Facebook or Twitter. And where this type if thing is getting increasingly prevalent on those types of site, the rambling shambling blog is becoming rarer all the time, as better outlets become available for this type of ‘personal log’ site...

This means that most blogs are now about something. Writing blogs about writing, gaming blogs about gaming, technical blogs, model aeroplane blogs, collecting soap... (Yes, I did find one) you name it, and there is probably at least one blog about it.

What I not see as the most polarising factor with blogs, apart from the subject matter, is the use of ‘conversational’ verses ‘report’ type of posts. And although I do try to find a fair mix I have fallen into this behaviour myself. I think my writing blog is much more conversational in style, where my gaming blog both looks and reads much more like an on-line magazine. This wasn’t a conscious decision; they just seem to have turned out how they did rather organically.

I’ve also noticed that the ‘Pageviews’ of my writing blog are much higher (over 14 times as much) than those on the other one. Of course there could be many reasons why this is, other than the content and style. Or could it possibly be that writers just read more than gamers... surely not!

It could be that my gaming blog is just more rubbish than this one. Or being primarily an alternate/retro gaming site it doesn’t have the same mass appeal as, hence exposure, of other blogs. But reasons aside I was looking at my technical writing in both these sites. I’m not going for the level of accuracy I would aim for when writing a story in ether of them. But that doesn’t mean I just writing a ‘stream of consciousness’ mess ether (well mostly not, anyway) I do try to have a structure in all the blogs, even if this is more natural and less scripted than I would have when planning a short-story. But it is still a planned piece of writing. You still have to put some thought into it if you want people to be bothered reading it. So is that perhaps what the least successful blogs are missing, and what the most successful have in spades?

I wouldn’t want to dissuade anyone from bloging though. The whole point I’m making is that you don’t have to be a ‘writer’ (quotes and all) to blog. But if you are going to put the effort in, surely you want to make something interesting and worthwhile (if only to yourself and perhaps a handful of others) and than means you have to think about what you write.

So maybe you can’t say you’re a writer simply because you blog, but make the effort and you can at least say you are someone who writes! And there’s noting wrong with that.