Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging

Here's another good list - the seven deadly blogging sins:

1. Using Free Blog Hosting Services
2. Ignoring the Basic Principles of Good Web Site Design and Usability
3. Being the Jack Of All Trades
4. Not Posting Regularly
5. Publishing Badly Written Posts
6. Spamming and Stealing
7. Failing to Establish a Personality

Comments

[Pinyo]

Wow...I am on Micro Persuasion. I am a big fan of your blog and read it regularly. Thank you for the citation.

[Zoli Erdos]

Yes, it's a good list, except for the mistake of listing Typepad as a free service:-)

[Adam Saunders]

We've all been guilty of one of these sins at one point or another. Luckily, the blogging community is somewhat forgiving, as long as you adapt and don't keep up bad practices.

"Deadly" is so harsh. Don't get to hard on us free wheeling bloggers:) I think a lot is lost from blogging when it gets too serious about itself.

[balouch]

Link to your post at:
http://en.blognews.ir/

[Rob Barac]

For the great unwashed masses out there (myself included), how about expanding on some of these points Steve?

1. Using Free Blog Hosting Services
- easy

2. Ignoring the Basic Principles of Good Web Site Design and Usability
- font size, colours and layout?

3. Being the Jack Of All Trades
- not all of us are the master of one

4. Not Posting Regularly
- well... ummm

5. Publishing Badly Written Posts
- if the blogosphere is truly the democratization of media and information, then people of all walks of life and education will be posting

6. Spamming and Stealing
- obvious, but there is also a fine line between what I consider to be stealing and information regurgitation

7. Failing to Establish a Personality
- what if one does not have a personality or doesn't know how to establish one?

[quaisi]

I`m sick and tired of larger blogs persistently saying that using a free service blog means the user isn`t serious about blogging or should be easily dismissed with a click of the mouse.

Surely it is the content which is king and not the name. May I refer you to an excellent blogging help site A Consuming Experience and plenty of others which provide quality content without using their own domain name.

You yourself have stated that the bigger blogs should be less snobbish and more encompassing to the wider community regardless of the size of the blog or the domain name. Why don`t you take some of your own advice?

You have a very interesting site with useful content displayed daily. I particularly enjoy your hacks posts. It just annoys me when I see larger blogs display a level of snobbery that shouldn`t be observed to their fellow comrades in the blogosphere. Is that too much to ask?

[tribeless]

Lists like these aren't surprising. Most folks want rules, it's just easier and cleaner that way. Ok to do this, not ok to do that. The rules of blogging are there are no rules. Its like the wild west and it's dirty; real dirty. Readers always play the role of judge, jury and executioner. What's really annoying however, is that some bloggers are blogging for their own benefit rather than the benefit of readers. Further complicating the matter is that some readers actually find value in that model. Go figure.