Imagine some guy going to Hollywood who had never once seen a movie. Looking for work, he decides to go to a movie studio head and ask for a job making movies. The studio head is inclined to give the guy a chance, and gives the fellow a list of movies to rent. The guy shakes his head. He doesn’t want to watch movies, he just wants to make movies. And get paid for it of course.
That’s not the way it works of course. Movie makers start out by watching lots of movies. Book writers start out as book readers, and short story writers start as short story readers. And if you want your blog to be worth reading in a world crowded with blogs, you must read blogs yourself.
Blog reading helps you to know the art form that is blogging. You need to read the great blogs, the sad-and-sorry blogs, and those in between. You need to read blogs in your own blog’s niche, and blogs on other topics.
The main thing you are looking for when reading blogs is the content. Some blogs have a nifty look, some are more plain, but that doesn’t really count. What matters to blog readers is the content. Blog readers are usually people who have done an internet search looking for specific information. They read blog posts (and other web sites) that seem to have the information they want. If a blog doesn’t look promising as a source of that information, they move on to another blog or website in seconds.
In time, many people become regular readers of a blog that seems to have a lot of good information. They keep coming back for more. The most popular blogs in each niche have discovered the secret of attracting regular readers. Sad-and-sorry blogs are more likely blogs that put off readers.
How do you become a blog reader? I mean, the mechanics of it? Search engines are a start. Try doing a search on [blogs} + [your niche] and you will come up with some possibilities. Among your search results you may find ‘The Ten Best Writing Blogs’ or ’25 Author Blogs You Must Read’ or ‘The 20 Best Low-Carb Recipe Blogs’— whatever your niche is. These can be a great resource in finding some of the best-known blogs in your niche.
Both Blogger and WordPress . com have a blog reading tool, but I don’t currently use either all that much. Currently I use Bloglovin’, which makes it easy to follow new blogs. Copy-and-paste the URL of a blog you have found that looks good into the search box at Bloglovin’. The blog in question will come up, and you can follow it. Then the posts in that blog will end up with others in your feed.
Please follow my blog with Bloglovin
Suggestion: avoid following the very high end professional blogs that have multiple writers and post many times a day or even more than once an hour. They will clog up your Bloglovin’ feed bigtime. You might try a second type of blog reader for blogs like that you just can’t miss.
Once you have a number of blogs to read, you will have stuff to look at in your daily blog-reading session. This may give you ideas on what to blog about. NOT that you will ever be copying someone else’s blog idea for the day, or even writing something very similar just now. You might write a reaction post with multiple links to the original post on Someone Else’s Blog, in which you give a different perspective. You could even slam every single bit of Someone Else’s blog post, but that would mean you are not really a nice person and I refuse to believe that of you. I believe you will take the high road and even when you strongly disagree with a post you are reacting to, you will be so polite and so positive that the Someone Else whose blog post you are reacting to will actually be flattered that you mentioned his blog post. You’re just that kind of blogger.
Good Writing/Author Blogs:
The Creative Penn https://www.thecreativepenn.com/
Joanna Penn also does writing-related podcasts.
Jeff Goins, Writer https://goinswriter.com/blog/
Much aggressive marketing on this website. Popups galore.
Jane Friedman https://www.janefriedman.com/blog/
A Pius Man: http://www.declanfinn.com/
Declan Finn is a friend, I’ve named a kitten after him. (Declanna.)
Dawn Witzke http://dawnwitzke.com/
Also a friend, but there are no kittens named after her yet.
Tyrean Martinson https://tyreanswritingspot.blogspot.com/
Jon Del Arroz http://delarroz.com/
Another friend. My kitten Jon-with-Rice is named after him.
My Antimatter Life 