100th Post? Tell Them What They Win, Johnny!

This, then, is it. Our 100th post. Well, it is and it isn't. A few of the posts are where Ken created links for our side bar. Like Most Popular posts. Lists Rich Doesn't Make. And other such cute, spry little animals. No matter, they take comments -- not that they've garnered any, I don't believe, but then I haven't really checked (so sorry if you've commented there and were looking for a response) -- so I'm counting them. Coming full circle, then, HURRAY!!! We've reached the big 1-0-0!!! And that means nothing more or less than that we're pros now (minus the getting paid part of being a pro), and blogging for us has become old hat. That being the case, I think it's time to start doling out the advice to those younglings thinking about starting blogs or web sites or those neophytes that are just getting going in their respective blogging careers.

He that has ears, let him hear!

1) Always start your blog with a theme, and then feel free to abandon it. This works really well if you have a two-person blog, or more I suppose, and one person is very attached to the theme while the other makes posts with reckless abandon covering all sorts of subjects from his Mom's birthday to the Matchgame to self-loathing. Not only does that really bring the bloggers together as a team, but it makes for a nice, well-rounded blog about, well... nothing really.

2) When first going into blogging, start as hard and fast as you can with as many posts as you can. If you burn yourself out, that's fine, but we live in a sprinter's world. Keep in mind the Olympics. Are you watching the 100-yard dash or the marathon? Marathoners are booooooooooring. Fly, fast as you can. You won't regret it.

3) Insert posts with catchy names. We've had quite a few ourselves. Let's face it, when you get to a hundred, you have thousands to choose from. The now-deleted "Poopy-Doopy" was one such doozy. How about "Narnia -- B+" for a quick hook, eh? Hard to beat that one, I know. And an initial, blast-off post with a cool title, such as "Welcome to the Realm of Possibility," strikes such an original chord, it's bound to hook people right on in from everywhere around the world.

4) I've found that today's IQ-oriented bloggers enjoy posts that use lyrics from musicians that hardly anyone knows and turn them into semi-devotionals or self-help topics. If the religion doesn't run them in then the hope for self-actualization is sure to. Try this and don't bother waiting for the comments to roll into your post streams. Trust me on this one. I know that of which I speak.

5) Lists, lists, and more lists. And then games and memes. Especially when your Recent Post list is so short they fall off within a day or two. I'm of the opinion that what blog-readers love to do is dive right on into the archives of blogs that have caught their attention (see Item # 3 above for post names that help you do just that). Lists and memes -- readers just cannot help themselves but go back into the bowels of your archives and wade through them in hopes to find some of these babies. And speaking of lists, try posts with lists of cool music that no one else has heard of. That one worked well for me.

6) If you're hoping for readers of all ages, it's really good to identify with your readership. To do that, I feel it's extremely important to use dependent clauses, throw in a few mispelled words, misplaced gerunds, dangle a few participles, essentially forget about how a post reads. Just write it and hope for the best. Search the Internet. You'll see that we hip bloggers that have been around the block once or twice have this one down pat.

7) Lastly: This is the one where we probably fail most often. Glancing at our traffic, people tend to prefer lurking to commenting. So all you bloggers out there, please heed this advice: When someone comments, just ignore them. That's what they want. If we've learned nothing else and can teach nothing else, this one is the biggie. You affect more people by ignoring them than in any other way. Think about it.

Well, that's the advice sure to make for successful blogging. In other news relevant to our 100th post, somewhere Ken had panned for people to submit our site for the Bloggies. Ken, where are we on that? Did we win? Or did some other wannabe take our prize away? Did we get many votes? Heck, did we even get nominated? I know codepoke said he nominated us, but after reading many of his thoughtful comments, you'd have to think he was smarter than that. So no Bloggy this year. We'll get 'em next year, tiger.

And what would a 100th Post celebration without a gala to back it up? Party at Ken's place Friday night everybody: 7:00 p.m. and we'll go for 100 hours without sleeping. Get in on the action now cuz there ain't gonna be another celebration until Number 500!

If you don't mind a small wager, what are the odds that we'll make that?

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