Once again I failed to fire off my weekly news round-up on Friday (for which I apologise), and it got me thinking about blogging.<\/p>\n
What’s it all about, eh? Why do we blog? Just what are we trying to achieve? Recently a few writers have attempted to stir up a debate around the question of bloggers’ books, suggesting that in some way blogs are purely a marketing tool, a means of getting book deals. This seems a little reductive. Some people blog because they like talking and writing about and eating food – it’s a ‘creative outlet’ and a jolly good one at that.<\/p>\n
Others, yes, write blogs because they want to take their food writing further. It’s a living portfolio, the writing equivalent of playing unsigned gigs. Quite why this should be controversial I’m not sure, though the fact that no one has bitten at any of these vague attempts to whip up conflict would rather suggest that no one really cares.<\/p>\n
But the blog itself, why do it? I mean, for you there’s the ‘creative outlet’, for a commissioning editor at Random House it’s a glittering expose of your writing talents and your willingness to ferret out acute e’s from the bowels of your laptop. But what’s your reader – the average person sitting bored at their desk – getting out of it?<\/p>\n
The best blogs are those written with enthusiasm, love, and knowledge. Their excitement about food jumps off the page and is gobbled straight up by a reader who is entertained and informed for a few minutes.<\/p>\n
So it’s often said that you should never blog for the sake of it. Don’t write a blog post just because you haven’t written for two weeks. To a point I agree. On the occasions that I don’t do a weekly food news thingamajig it’s usually because either not much has happened or because I’m just too busy\/tired\/hungover. I don’t want to spank out a half-arsed account of the week’s non-happenings littered with typo’s speling mistaikes and pour grammer, because my reader will get nothing from it.<\/p>\n
But I’m not entirely convinced that this argument holds all that much water. I think as blogging continues to grow so too does a blogger’s responsibility to their readers. If you make a promise – spoken or unspoken – to provide a service, then you should stick to it. Whether that’s with weekly news or recipes or restaurant reviews or whatever, you gain credibility by being reliable.<\/p>\n
Ultimately the beauty of a blog is it’s up to you, the blogger. There’s no editor tapping you on the shoulder and imposing deadlines and that’s great. But to assume it’s all about when you do and don’t fancy writing is to undervalue your readers. Of course, it’s the blogger who will suffer as their readers drop off. What I’m ham-handedly trying to say is that good blogging is about more than just writing a post when you want to. Oh, and that I’m sorry when I’m feckless and lazy and fail to deliver my promise of weekly food news. I hope you’ll bear with me.<\/p>\n
Am I way off the mark here? Do you like a sporadic blog or do you want one that provides regular, reliable posts? Who are your favourite bloggers and why?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once again I failed to fire off my weekly news round-up on Friday (for which I apologise), and it got me thinking about blogging. What’s it all about, eh? Why do we blog? Just what are we trying to achieve? Recently a few writers have attempted to stir up a debate around the question of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[948,949,950,947],"class_list":["post-2719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-best-blogs","tag-how-to-blog","tag-when-to-blog","tag-why-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zdji-HR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesramsden.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesramsden.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesramsden.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesramsden.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesramsden.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesramsden.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2720,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesramsden.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions\/2720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesramsden.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesramsden.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesramsden.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}