Blogging

Your Post Should Be about You

It bears repeating: The primary focus of your post should be you—your thoughts, feelings, opinions, and experiences.

I do not want you to "teach me" about anything other than you.

I tell my students: If I want to learn about these things, I'll go to Wikipedia. The only reason I'm visiting your blog, is because I want to learn about you.

Now, if you want to tell me about the pet tarantula that you keep in an aquarium in your bedroom—that's fine. You can even throw in a few facts about tarantulas, and I won't mind at all. But the primary focus of your post should be you and your relationship with your tarantula. It should not be a post that reads as though you just copied it from a website about spiders.

Likewise, if you write a post about your love of baseball, that's fine. And if you want to tell me how upset you are that Major League Baseball recently changed the rules, I'm fine with that, too. But I don't want to read anything that resembles an article on "The Rules of Baseball."

And likewise, if you want to tell me how much you love Mozart, and how you're learning a piece by Mozart for an upcoming recital, and how difficult it is, and blah blah blah—I'm fine with that. And if you want to throw in a few facts about Mozart's life along the way, I'm fine with that too. But I certainly don't want to read a post that sounds mostly like this:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Austria in 1719. He started playing the piano when he was only three years old. By the time he was five, he was already composing minuets.

Can you see the difference? I hope so. I don't want to learn about Mozart or anything else. I want to learn about you!

Instructions for the Quiz

Answer the questions.

Quiz