God in his infinite wisdom decided to place bloggers and blunders only a vowel away from each other in the dictionary. You don’t think there is anything in this that needs to be taken seriously… right? You feel this is simply another chronology coincidence that I have stumbled upon and that, like the media, I am attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill. Now because I am not connected to any TRPs, you’re sure that it is readership stats that I am gunning for.
Wrong.
Let me first scandalise you with a glaring fact from the ‘blogging marathon’ that is active on indiblogger. I have noticed that MOST of the titles that bloggers are thinking of have one of the keywords in it. Come on, this isn’t mandatory. I mean, you are not asked to include one from music, peppy, fantastico, navigation, and impact necessarily in the title. The sponsors or promoters are just asking you to weave a creative article around a theme that revolves around one of these keywords. If a few had resorted to this practice, it might have seemed unique… but because a majority of the titles tend to follow this trend, I have no qualms to define it as a blunder. A blunder worth a snigger!
It is fine if you don’t agree with my calling this a title blunder… let me hop on other blunders that finally do have an impact on the credibility of a blogger. Let me just list ten of those blunders in blogs/bloggers that have bothered me most:
- Shoddy ideation that leads to jerky expression.
- Pathetic editing that makes readers shudder.
- Repetition of arguments that makes a post go round in circles.
- No thought going into making the title lure readers.
- No attention to blogging frequency.
- No attention to taking help from other social media platforms for spreading awareness about your posts.
- Tagging people to your posts as if that will make them read it.
- Not reading posts written by others and never giving honest feedback on their posts… a lot of bloggers just write ‘lovely’ or ‘nice’ and think they are doing a great job of networking.
- Working in closely-knit lobbies to deliberately keep others out, thinking this is what gives them the rating they want. This just makes your blogging universe miniscule.
- Blatant copying and not bothering to give credit for pictures taken from the net.
The truth is that this list isn’t the complete list but does have all the vital pointers that need to be understood properly.
Blunders will also include not knowing how to use emerging technology to help your post have a better impact. Prezi, Sway, and the hundreds of apps for creative output are technology bits that need to be explored. Hasn’t someone said that one needs to keep upgrading skills all the time? Even bloggers need to reinvent and restructure their output to keep ahead in this race for more and more readers.
.
.
.
indiblogger_blogging marathon
.
This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.
.
.
Arvind Passey
26 January 2016
6 comments
Kala Ravi says:
Jan 26, 2016
Ahh…finally someone who spotted and rectified the blunder! And here I was fretting, why is everyone using the key words in the title! Great pointers on what not to do while blogging. ‘Lovely’ and ‘nice’ are annoying! So are tight circles limiting the blogosphere!
Arvind Passey says:
Jan 27, 2016
I guess it isn’t a crime to use a keyword in the title… but then if everyone is doing the same thing in the same contest, it will appear ridiculous. Thanks for coming over and reading this post. 🙂
Antarik Anwesan says:
Jan 27, 2016
I was so irritated with the marathon posts filled in IndiVine (with almost no good content, and appearing clearly spammy), I decided not to be a part of it altogether. I really don’t understand how one can just go on posting for the sake of ‘vouchers’ or other gifts instead of getting the real win in the form of ‘readers’.
Thank you for writing this Arvind Sir. Let responsible bloggers take note and not get into the blunders.
Arvind Passey says:
Jan 27, 2016
Well, it is not going to be easy to weave the MOST INTERESTING post around any of the keywords given… and I guess if one is busy increasing numbers then quality is surely going to be the first casualty. 🙂
Sarthak Brahma says:
Jan 27, 2016
Sir, First things first, Not a big fan. I read most of the posts you put into various blogging contests but can never relate much. Next thing is that I am also concerned with the spamming which has been going about since last night but turns out it’s part of the game. Now because you have brought up this title thing, a ‘blunder worth a snigger’ if you will have it, it is as natural (or unnatural) as yours highlighting those keywords in your text even though they may hardly belong there.
Another thing is that the race to the top, the leaderboard, is well understood by all as a means to the 20 k vouchers and not the Zica. Whatever made you think we have that idea in a similar post of yours.
Also, that post which tells us to read the rules carefully suggests that the bloggers have misconstrued the line about assured vouchers. With due respect Sir, the rule never says there are 1000 vouchers to be given. Just that there are assured vouchers for the first 1000 entries. They might have meant the other way but wrote the opposite.
Finally, while it may suit someone like me to write a post degrading other bloggers (which I did write before you), you must be above this. Come to think of it, I had plenty of points to make in this comment. Almost as much as to give it a peppy title, write a post and increase my blog count. But I chose not to. I have been disappointed since the last night spamming activities and posts like yours follow the same line of degradation. So long!
Arvind Passey says:
Jan 27, 2016
Thanks for your comment here, Sarthak. You will relate to good writing once you read more and more of it… but it is ok, not everyone loves reading good stuff in this age when book-sellers are inundated with ‘write-your-novel-in-BTech-1st-year’ kind of books that are written by ego-centric belligerent kids who cannot differentiate a nose from nosing.
Yes, I do agree with your point of view and I am sure I wasn’t focused on you while writing the post… and I was surely not degrading other bloggers. I was simply talking of a phenomenon that I had observed and I guess there will always be a few who will understand and change their direction.