Going Meta On Your Meta
Over the past few days I’ve been reading a great many posts on the subject of blogging, from how to grow a young blog to finding topics for regular posts. It’s been an eye-opening experience for me to see just how many sites are out there, solely dedicated to helping bloggers when they are both starting out and when they’re fairly well-established yet wondering why nobody ever seems to read them.
One of the things which struck me on my nocturnal blog advice wanderings was the number of posts dedicated to finding inspiration for blog posts. From advice for women bloggers to 101 ideas for blog topics lists, they all had one thing in common: their writers had gone meta on their meta.
Think about it for a moment. Imagine you are a blogger, and you’re trying to dream up some ideas for regular posts. It’s an accepted fact that a regular posting schedule is more likely to gain you faithful readers than an irregular one, so the hunt for interesting topics can become a fraught one. So what’s a blogger to do when the well starts to run dry?
Well… how about writing a blog post on finding inspiration for a blog post? In the same way as a writer might pen a novel about a writer who is penning a novel, the stumped blogger who needs something to post about can create his own Möbius strip: a post aimed at stumped bloggers who need something to post about.
I call it ‘going meta on your meta’ and I’m doing it right here. I wanted a subject to blog about, and I got thinking about ‘needing something to blog about’, which led me on my search and finally to this post. You don’t need to wait for divine inspiration to strike. Any writer worth their ink will tell you that’s a surefire way to get everything else done, except writing, and a common piece of advice in books about writing tells you that if you’re not sure what to write about, write about being not sure what to write about. Because at least you’re writing something, even if it is crap.
Of course, you don’t want to write a load of crap for your blog (at least, I hope not!) Even a post dedicated to your fumblings for something to post about can be worth reading, if only for the humour you could inject into your frustrated brain-rummaging. You could surf the net, as I did, find someone else who is talking about blog topics, and add some links to your post o’frustration. Turn that frustration into a post in its own right. Go meta on your meta. Because you can be sure that someone else out there might one day link to your post when they run into the same problem.
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Blogging With Barbara – Cool Blog Ideas part 1
Blogging With Barbara – Cool Blog Ideas part 2
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