Recapturing the magic of the early blogging days

At work today someone asked today about how we recapture the magic of the early days of blogging. I have some ideas.

First, I don’t think that magic is gone! Sure, a lot of people moved to social platforms. The dopamine hit is just too addicting. Fortunately a lot of cool people are still blogging, and doing interesting things with it. Check out the People and Blogs series, and more importantly the blogs referenced in them, for inspiration. I maintain a feed of the referenced feeds here: https://peopleandblogs.feedland.cloud/

What else can you do? Reclaim your stuff from social media and do more with your own site. Make it deep. Make it you.That’s where the magic is.

Lean into IndieWeb trends, such as /now, /meta, /uses, /ideas https://aboutideasnow.com/

Post statuses/short notes on your own domain. I like the IndieBlocks plugin, but Jetpack also has the Social Notes feature.

Post what you’d post to GoodReads on a page on your own site. You can use a tool, or just a simple page with bullet points.

Post bookmarks and likes to your own site instead of keeping them silo’d in a tool. Even better if it has its own feed.

Lower the linkblogging barrier. The faster and easier it is to post a link, the more you’ll do it. I use an Apple Shortcut that posts to a micropub endpoint. Easy peasy.

Post a blogroll! Keep it updated!

Join a webring!

Join a blog carnival!

Just blog more. The exciting blogging days were not as polished. A lot of people think blog posts need to be these polished complete pieces, but it takes time and effort. It is more fun when you just type something and hit post. That is where the short notes shine for me.

Of the couple thousand blog posts I’ve made across multiple blogs, the one that gets most traffic was a quick throwaway post about how to cook hotdogs without a grill. I almost didn’t post it. https://cooklikechuck.com/2015/07/23/making-hot-dogs-without-a-grill/

It doesn’t matter if people want your posts to come via email. Email is a pain. Just post and they’ll check your blog.

Do regular updates. I like weekly. Every week I’m not sure I have something to post about and every week I get out at least 1000 words and some photos.

Yeah, I need to take my own advice. That’s why I’m posting this. Next I need to revamp my blogroll and respond to this month’s IndieWeb Carnival prompt.

Hit post.