Steal This Blog!

By admin on August 6, 2009 12:17 PM

I often get asked how I find out about all the new technology, sites and multimedia projects featured here at 10,000 Words. The answer is not as simple as you may think, so I’m giving away some of the secrets of what makes this blog so unique. While I don’t want you to literally steal this blog (I will find you and hunt you down), I do encourage you to use some of the tools I’ve used to grow this blog into the resource it has become.

The first key to coming up with ideas is thinking about what hasn’t been written before. Many blogs regurgitate the same information and while its cool to see different viewpoints on the same topic, a lot of blogs end up publishing similar content. I often write down ideas as soon as I have them whether it’s in the grocery store or while driving, even if I won’t flesh out the post until months later. I keep a Google Doc with a list of possible posts, some that are written days later, some that have languished for more than a year. But the ideas are there if I need them and if I see an article, site or multimedia project that may complement a particular post, I save it in the Google Doc.

So how do I find the examples to back up the ideas? To start, I subscribe to about 150 different blogs (most of which aren’t actually about journalism) and keep tabs on them using RSS/Google Reader. They range from popular technology blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch to design sites such as Inspiredology, FFFFOUND!, Smashing Magazine and Motionographer and even blogs filled with awesome randomness such as Neatorama, mental_floss and kottke.org. I bookmark the posts I find interesting or have some sort of journalism angle and save them for later.

I supplement this reading by staying on top of what people are sharing on StumbleUpon and Twitter. I also use the latter, as well as Delicious, to look for specific examples to include in posts. For example for the December post “News databases: Turning numbers into knowledge” I entered the tags “database” and “journalism” into Delicious to see what was being produced by newsrooms. For “A quick guide to interactive YouTube videos”, I searched Twitter for “cool interactive video.”

Most of all, what makes 10,000 Words unique is that I often write about things that I care about even if I think no one else will. Posts like this week’s collection of Dr. Seuss quotes, December’s post on the typography of the movie “Milk” or even my thoughts on the correlation between journalism and porn I wrote not because I wanted people to read them (heck I’m surprised if people actually do) but because they were topics I am passionate about.

A final ingredient is leveraging the power of social networks like Twitter and StumbleUpon. It’s not about just posting links to your stories and hoping that people will magically flock to your stuff. It’s about engaging with other people, finding out what others are interested in, and filling an existing need.

A lot of new bloggers get frustrated when they begin blogging and they aren’t attracting the visitors or comments that they’d like to see, often times in the first few months of blogging. 10,000 Words was started a little over two years ago with the same problem, but now attracts thousands of visitors a day because good blogs take time to grow. Large numbers of readers don’t happen overnight so before you begin blogging or even if you’ve already started, consider that it may take a prolonged period of time before any kind of success can happen.

All this may sound daunting, but if you blog about what you love, then it will never seem like a chore. It also may seem time-consuming, but I can assure it’s not that bad. In the meantime, I’d love to see any sites or projects I might have missed so feel free to send an email to mluckie @ 10000words.net or send a tweet @10000Words. Good luck and happy blogging!

Also on 10,000 Words:

• 9 Tips for improving your blog and inspiring user feedback
• The tools I actually use
• 30 Amazing photoblogs (and a few tips for creating one)