[1]I’m often asked about Bearing Drift when I’m in Republican or political circles. The tenor of the comments is usually two-fold – first, I always get asked how I got into blogging and then I get asked how I can handle the constant criticism. My answer is usually the same: I’m insane.
This week marks the third anniversary of my leaving Too Conservative to start my own blog and then move to Bearing Drift, so I’ve been thinking about the whole business of blogging and some of the best practices I’ve seen from folks around Virginia and nationally.
And since, being a writer, one of the things I do best is provide unsolicited advice, here’s a few tips that might help the next generation out when they decide they want to get into this business or help those who are already here to take their game to the next level.
Use your real name – This is a big one, because there are a lot of pseudonymous bloggers out there and they’re going to call me a snob for this one, but I stand by it. If you expect people to take you seriously, read what you write and either be influenced by or it have your writing drive the debate, you need to be willing to put your name on it. If you don’t, anything you say can be easily discounted. I can only think of one anonymous blogger who ever had a real impact on the Virginia blogosphere and that was the Angry Potato – and the only reason he/she had an impact was because what he/she was writing was so incendiary, everyone wanted to know who they were. Most anonymous bloggers don’t generate that kind of controversy. There are really no real reasons to be anonymous nowadays. If, for whatever reason, you don’t feel comfortable writing under your own name, you should probably not be writing to begin with.
Put your bio on your website – This is a pet peeve of mine, and one that some of my fellow bloggers think is snotty, but I believe it just the same. Anybody can write about politics, and everybody has an opinion. Just because you decide to put your opinions out in public doesn’t mean anybody has to care. But when folks know your background and know where you’re coming from, it adds credibility to your posts that may otherwise be lacking. Almost no one comes to blogging without having done something political – whether it’s volunteering on campaigns, or interning, or the like. Give your readers a little more to go on about who you are and what your background is and they’ll be more willing to accept your opinions, especially on technical subjects. Don’t get me wrong – anybody can be a blogger. But nobody has to take what you write seriously, either. Give them a reason to and explain why your opinion is something they should read. And, again, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want your private info up on the internet, you shouldn’t be blogging anyway.
Decide if you want to be a reporter or a commentator – Reporters report the news. Commentators comment on it. Some bloggers are great at breaking news and reporting – they like getting interviews with elected officials and candidates and reporting on local happenings. Others, like me, don’t and prefer commentary writing. It’s okay to do a little of both, but don’t fall into the Mainstream Media trap of trying to be a reporter and slipping your commentary in where it doesn’t belong. Pick one or the other.
Engage your readers in the comments – This is part of the fun of writing for a blog. This isn’t the newspaper or the TV, where people look at you funny if you talk back. Blogging is about starting conversations. The bloggers who engage their readers, who respond to comments and debate with folks in the comments will build an audience much faster than those who just write what they want and don’t allow or engage in responses with readers. Everybody wants feedback on what they write, and the comments are feedback – enjoy it. Even when you’ve got a list of people who hate you and will use the comments on any story to bash you, they’re still reading your stuff and running up the hit count on your site. Take advantage of that.
Humility is your friend – You’ve set up a blog. You wrote an article. Welcome to 2003. Just because you’ve decided to make your opinions public doesn’t mean anybody has to care or that you’re somehow part of the White House Press Corps now. Just because you’ve found a microphone doesn’t mean what you’re writing is any good or is advancing the debate. So don’t get a big head, don’t pretend you’re more influential than you are, and don’t assume that because you’ve got a blog you’re smarter than the rest of the unwashed masses who just read them. Nothing turns readers off more than what they perceive to be arrogance – trust me, I get this a lot – in somebody writing on the internet. It never hurts to keep in mind that most people assume that if you’re blogging, you’re living in your parent’s basement.
Write about what people want to read – The nuances of economic policy in the European Union may be something you are fascinated by, unless your blog is about economic policy, nobody is going to care. Likewise, if you’re writing a baseball blog, it’s probably a good idea to keep the politics off it. In the end, write to your strengths – if you want to write a blog about Virginia politics, keep the non-Virginia or non-national politics somewhere else. Given the metrics available nowadays – both the behind the scenes metrics like hits and page reads, as well as the social media indicators of retweets and likes – you can tell right away if you’ve laid an egg or hit it out of the park.
Remember which side you’re on – This is advice I give primarily to Republican bloggers, because we’re generally better about this than the Democrats. It’s easy to get mad at folks in your own party when they do dumb things, and it’s absolutely correct for us to hold each other accountable. In fact, it’s better when we do it, because we have credibility with those we criticize and our opinions matter more to them. It’s easy to discount a Republican criticizing a Democrat or vice versa. But when you’ve got someone in your own party criticizing you, you need to sit up and listen. The point that’s important to keep in mind, however, is that there’s always a line between being critical and being an asshole. If you want to see plenty of evidence of where that line is routinely obliterated, go check out Blue Virginia or some of the other well known Democratic blogs, where political cannibalism is the name of the game. You might get some readers doing that, but that’s the cheap way of doing things. Don’t forget which side you’re on.
Transparency is the best defense – Conflicts of interest happen, especially when your day job involves getting paid for politics or you’re volunteering or privately working for a campaign. Especially when you’re in a primary environment and tensions are high, it’s in your best interests to either not write about the subject or, at a minimum, disclose which side you’re on. There is nothing worse to blowing up your own credibility than writing a hard hitting piece and then being outted in the comments as having lobbyied on the issue, supported the candidate you’re defending, or been paid for it. No amount of money or potential benefit to your friend is worth destroying your own credibility. Don’t do it.
I know there are probably other tips I could give out, but these are the ones I think matter most. Most of the most successful Republican bloggers follow all of these tips, so this isn’t one of those “do as I say” type comments.
In the end, we are part of the media whether we like it or not and it’s up to us to define professionalism for our industry. These tips all help highlight professionalism and help to make blogging a more credible form of journalism.