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So you wanna write a RPG blog? Part 5: Then What?

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In the last 2 weeks, I wrote a primer about starting a new RPG blog. While I knew it wasn’t going to be all that original, I thought that would-be RPG bloggers could benefit from it.  It turns out they did as I’m already seeing a few new RPG blogs cropping up (Here’s one and here’s another).

This last part is about dealing with the future of your newly minted blog.  Let’s fast forward a few weeks/months and discuss what will likely happen with your shiny new RPG blog. I want to discuss a blog’s success or failure as well as likely motivational slumps.  I’ll end this series with links to other people’s articles you might find interesting as further reading and a request for more!

Success!

So you’re getting a few comments per post, you got a few links by other bloggers and the overall feedback is good (or bad, it that’s what you’re after) and you feel full of energy and pumped!  You spend too much of your work day checking your emails for notifications.

Yup, it has started! People read your blog and have started to react. Congratulation you’ve made your first step out of the huge pile of unread questionable content that is 90%+ of the blogsphere.

If growth of your blog is among your goals, now is the time to resist the easy lure of safe comment baiting. Don’t try to mimic what gave you a few comments but think of expanding your range of subjects for new posts.

The cliché that content is king, is true. While the tips I gave about networking and linking to other bloggers will bring about curious onlookers, it’s fresh content that will turn visitors into regular readers.

One reaction I see frequently among bloggers with burgeoning readership is jealousy/insecurity vs other bloggers. I read more than one comment, usually in jest, in the likes of ‘Don’t come and steal our 5 readers’. I also keep seeing bloggers selling themselves short by mentioning how ‘no one reads this post’, or ‘if you feel like loosing time, please read the following’

This is nothing more than those inner demons rearing their ugly heads again. It’s fear of inadequacy, of not being able to cope with success and the good old impostor syndrome (“Oh Noes, they’ll soon discover I’m nothing but a hack that got lucky”).

Please don’t let the demons win.  Any defensive and/or self-defeating reaction on your part (in posts, comments, Instant messages and emails) is a warning sign to readers that you’re not comfortable as a blogger.  Don’t sell yourself short, ever!

Success should not be scary. Humans get used to everything, that’s why we don’t go insane because we hear a clock ticking.  Success is nothing more than getting recognition for the hard work you poured in your website. Take it in strides, you’ll get used to it… eventually.

As the success of you blog increases, it will translate to more and more comments on your posts.  You’ll have to decide how you wish to react to them. Following comments is extremely time consuming (especially trying to respond to all of them) and may very well threathen your day job’s performance.

Let’s be honest here, most readers and your response to comments are done during regular buisness hours. If you have a job that allows you the liberty to follow your blog, fine, but be careful to keep your priorities straight. Unpaid successful blogging can become way more rewarding than your day job and therin lies the danger.

I suggest that you disable email notifications and check on your comments at specific periods of the day, where you can afford to spend time on them (I’ll get to that with my own blog… eventually).

As mentioned in the ‘Who?‘ part of this series, you might also think about leaving your commenters to fend for themselves and visit only a few times a day to read and comment when your input is needed.

After a certain point (more than 10-20 comments or so), the discussion often becomes self-sustained and you can enjoy the ride without the fear of insulting your readers by not showing up all the time.

Bottom line: Success is fun, take it in stride and make sure you won’t lose your job because of it.

Failure

So you’ve been spending a few weeks writing your heart out. You comment on forums (with a link to your blog in your signature) and on other people’s blogs and no one ever comments on your blog.

That’s not fun for sure.

Try to find a reason for that, chances are it’s not because the RPG blog readerships is made of tasteless jerks, it isn’t.  They’re an interesting, spirited, opinionated, but usually nice bunch.

There’s a good chance you’re doing something that keeps readers from “getting you”:

  • Is it because you make too many mistakes or post huge walls of texts with no paragraphs?
  • Is it because your ideas are all jumbled up and the text is hard to follow?
  • Is it because you are an emotional person and you post vehemently about things that bug you about RPGs (This can work, just not all the time and with limited amounts of venom)?
  • Is it because your subject range is to restricted or you revisit the same subject too much?
  • Are you the blogging equivalent of that guy that always talks about his character?
  • Is it because your blog is written in pale blue over a yellow background?
  • Is it because readers have to register and fill unreadable Capchas to comment?

If it’s any of these reasons, you should try to change a few things to make the experience better for the readers. Chances are, they’ll eventually start coming.

However if, after all the effort, you just don’t have that much to say about RPGs or writing is just too much effort for you, maybe blogging is not your cup of tea.

As I said before, that’s okay too, you can always try later when inspiration hits or if you develop your creative writing skills through other outlets.

Bottom line: If no one will read you, don’t blame others, check what you may be doing wrong and change.   Maybe blogging might just not be for you.

Hitting a slump/Blogger Burnout

Somewhere in the first few months of blogging you will hit a wall.  Blogging will start feeling like work.  You’ll feel you have to post something new.  You’ll feel all your posts end up saying the same things.  Worse still, Writer’s block will set in.

Much like a gym membership, you’ll start to rationalize why you’ll skip the next post and you’ll feel guilty about it.

When this happen you need to pause and reflect on the reasons why you blog and the true goals you set for yourself.  Ask yourself some questions like:

  • Do you have to post that often?
  • Do you post to please a crowd?
  • Have you ventured in a series or a blog project that does not interest you anymore?
  • What would you need to do to make blogging fun again ?

If you forge on through this without some reflection you’ll eventually go through blogging burnout and most likely quit for an extended period of time.

One good way to get out of the slump is to take a short break.  Don’t worry, your readers will come back, that’s what RSS feeds are for  (I’ll take good care of them…. he he he).

During that break, revisit your blog’s theme and plugins.  Brainstorm for some new types of posts.  If you focused on campaign logs, how about posting some house rules (we all have them) or giving your players some questionnaires to post online?  If you are artistically inclined, start a RPG themed webcomic or post some of your art.

One thing you should not do during a slump is posting about how sorry you are for not posting or how down you feel.  While you can occasionally share your feelings when life takes a turn the wrong way, your readers’ tolerance for melodrama is not infinite.

I mean, I used to love the Megatokyo Webcomic, but I stopped reading the artist’s Angst-ridden ‘woe is me’ posts a long time before I stopped reading the strip.

A slump is a signal that your motivations are no longer aligned with your original reasons for blogging. Heed that signal and see what needs to be changed.  If you do, you will likely bounce back…

I did, at least twice, in the last year.  As you can see, I’m still here, on a nearly daily basis.

Bottom line: A slump is a signal that something’s wrong.  Stop and reflect. Change something and bounce back!

Where to go from here?

My work here is mostly done, like Yax said, I made a one post idea into a 8 000+ word epic.

If you want to learn more about blogging in general, I suggest that you give a visit to some of the blogs that focus on writing.

My good friends James and Harry at Men with Pens and Bob from The Writing Journey have written many posts on the subject.  Here’s a Chatty’s special selection:

Men with Pens

The Writing Journey

Finally, during my writing of this Series, Trask, of Living Dice wrote an interesting post about Search Engine Optimization for RPG bloggers.  Ninetail of A Butterfly Dreaming also chimed in with a very useful post about hosting your blog on a hosting service.

Edit:

My good buddy Bartoneous just linked me to another blog doing a similar series, only she’s tackling Niche blogging as a whole, have a look.

Reader Ravyn, owner of Exchange of Realities posted about dealing with the crunch we feel when we get too close to a writer’s deadline.

Your turn, the E-Book project

Seeing how popular this series became, I’m thinking seriously about making it into a free PDF book.

In order to make it more useful, I would love for your RPG bloggers to chime in with posts on RPG blogging of your own.  Maybe you think I missed something or that something could be expanded upon.

Post the articles on your respective blogs and tell me about them. We can then discuss how to make them into chapters of the book (With credits and links top your blogs).

The book would be built shortly after Gen Con and I’d love to get some nice art, professional layout and editing.  I’m going around you guys by email asking for help.

Thanks so much one and all for reading and commenting!

Now time for a vacation!

Comments

  1. Thanks for a great series, Chatty! I found your blog right as I was beginning to experiment with my own RPG blog, mycroftianhorror.blogspot.com, and your posts have been a big help. My only question is about how narrow a focus you think is appropriate. With my blog, I’m trying to talk about mechanics and game design. Am I boxing myself in? Would I do better to tackle RPGs in general?
    Thanks,
    –Nick

    Nick O’Learys last blog post..Quick Fix: Superpowers in Fate

  2. I love the series. You should definitely compile it into a PDF. I had started a weblog a few days before stumbling upon yours, as well as a few others. Before this week I didn’t have a clue how large the RPG blogging community was.

    I am also impressed that the blogging community appears to be very interconnected and aware of each other… you know like a community should be. I feel very welcome, even during some of the recent heated 4e debates.

    After two decades of gaming, gamers still impress me with their willingness to embrace strangers. We have a reputation for being introverts, but when we see that same spark of interest in someone else, we tend to shed those barriers and let people in.

    Enough gushing, I think the only improvement that could be made to your blogging series might be some more info on web design and possibly some code… but that topic is large enough to fill an entire wall at your local bookstore. Maybe a more detailed table of available blog software and their capabilities (the Wikipedia entry is lacking in crunch).

    MadBrewLabss last blog post..GenCon 2008

  3. @Nick: Welcome to the blog! It was a pleasure. I’d say you should adopt a range of RPG topic as wide as your own interest about the subject is. Instead of narrowness, I invite you to create series on focused topics. So when you feel inspired, post several articles in the same series. Move on to other topics when the inspiration has done it’s course.

    @MadBrew: Welcome to you too! I didn’t tackle these subjects mostly because they fall outside of my ‘expertise’. I’m no coder and I stumbled very erratically through blog softwares before I settled on Blogger and then WordPress.

    However, both would make great derivative posts for other bloggers (hint, hint).

  4. Hmmm…. how to organically fit writing about RPG blogs into this… you’d think writing about writing would make it work perfectly.

    Nick: I’d say it depends on what kind of audience you think you can appeal to, and what you consider your strong suits to be. I go out of my way to avoid writing about specific mechanics, or even about specific game systems–if I ever do a riff on the edition wars, I’ll probably be trying to find someone else to host it because I don’t think it would fit with what I’m doing–partly because I’m a writer trying as much to hook other writers as other gamers, and partly because let’s face it, mechanics are not my strong suit. ….now I’m just going all stream-of-consciousness…. Write what you know. Or what you want to know and have time to research.

    *looks at the comments* ….gamers… welcomingness… shared idiom…. the secret language of the gaming community…. idea…. MadBrew, don’t let me forget I owe you one!

    *dashes off to draft*

    Ravyns last blog post..Making the Real World Help You

  5. Yay!

    I almost wish you’d done this series before I started up my own blog. 🙂

    One thing you wrote a while back did allay some of my anxiety about starting a blog. Mainly I started for myself, as a place to write about stuff I cared about. It took me nearly forever to start my own blog because, well, I figured you had to write something Meaningful and Informative.

    But screw that! I’ve been doing it for a few months by this point, and although I’m not sure it really adds much value to the web as a whole, it’s a nice little archive of my thoughts as well as some “actual play” stuff.

    Anyway, thanks for the advice, from someone who lurks but infrequently comments!

    Matthews last blog post..Lying liars

    Matthews last blog post..Lying liars

  6. You said you wanted blogging posts–here’s a little something for you to start with, and I’ll see if I can have a riff on the language of the gaming community sometime in the next week.

    http://exchangeofrealities.today.com/2008/08/01/when-time-attacks/

    Warning: This link may be defunct before 12:01 am Pacific Coast time on August 1, as I can’t stay up until midnight to post these things personally anymore and if I wait until tomorrow to send it to you you won’t get it until 7 pm.

    Ravyns last blog post..Making the Real World Help You

  7. I would also advice to find one or more co-posters. Spread the work on a few more shoulders and you’ll have some healthy and fun competition: Who writes the post with the best rating, most reads… AND you can go away for a vacation without feeling bad.

    Karstens last blog post..Martial Arts

  8. I think you nailed it, Phil. The only things I can think to add are………

    Go to sleep chanting “Content is King, Content is King, Content is King”. Wake up chanting it too. If you spend 4 hours every week trying to create the perfect theme for your blog, but only make one blogpost in all that time You Have Failed. Your posts must come first, every single time.

    Write for yourself, but choose a theme for your audience. If you’re posting about stuff you enjoy, you’ll keep posting, write more, and write better. Be enthusiastic. Pick a theme that’s clean and simple. Readers don’t use sidebars – they’re a convenience for you – so keep ’em simple and out of the way. Consider ditching the sidebar completely as this gives more screen estate for what’s important – the Content!

    Think about your RSS feed. It’s important as that’s what draws your existing readers back to the fold. Put your entire post in the RSS and they won’t click through as they’ve already got your words. If your number of pageviews doesn’t matter then that’s great, but if you’re sweating over Google Analytics every day you’re not doing yourself any favours. If your RSS feed is just the title then you’ve better make sure your title is GREAT! 🙂 A good compromise is title+teaser (perhaps the first paragraph of your post). Find out what your blogging software can do to control the RSS, and find the best balance for you.

    On the subject of RSS – if you make a blogpost that’s just a list of interesting links then your readers using RSS will click through to those links directly from the RSS; they won’t go to your blog first, /then/ click. Again, if you’re interesting in number of pageviews it’s a Failed Post. Put more effort in to make your own posts valuable (so other folks link to you!), fold those links into what you have to say or write another post soon afterwards.

    Don’t sweat about how often you blog. Find a rhythm that suits you, and be flexible. Life > blogging. If you don’t blog for a few days your visitors will tail off, but they’ll return when you do. Don’t worry about it.

    Blog tactically. Use words that you know your fanbase will use when searching Google. Blog about current events, use the correct terms for the game, and (sneaky alert!) occasionally drop in mis-spellings to pick up the mis-spellers of the world. For example, I picked up a lot of traffic from typing Figthers instead of Fighters in one post about D&D. Go figure.

    Write about all your interests. It’s your blog, and you’re unique. There’s bound to be other D&D bicyicle enthusiasts out there.

    OK. I’m done. Need more coffee 🙂

  9. You mean like all those people who constantly look for the perfect Rouge build?

    @Ravyn: Thanks for your post, I’ll put a link to it in mine in the next minute

    @Matthew: Thanks for the kudos. Don’t sweat the “added value”, you’re not blogging about Britney Spear’s latest gaffe so chances are you are adding value to the web.

    @Karsten: Team blogging is a great Slump/burnout deterrent. Look at the Gnome Stew crowd, this is some great team GM blog.

    @Greywulf: Ohhhh that’s why there’s so many guys obsessed with Rouge! I was wondering what all that makeup talk was about?

    Good tips my man!

  11. Hey Chatty,

    First, count me as another who started a blog because of this series.

    I want to respond to something Greywulf said, though:
    Readers don’t use sidebars – they’re a convenience for you – so keep ‘em simple and out of the way. Consider ditching the sidebar completely

    I may be a new blogger, but I’m a reader with close to 40 rss feeds linked in my Firefox toolbar and I think this is terrible advice. I found a lot of those blogs after you enabled CommentLuv, and the ones without archive links in the sidebar never failed to annoy me. When I find a new blog the first thing I want to do is scan over the (preferably complete) archives in some summarized manner so I can see how long the blog has been around, how frequent the posts are, and whether the blogger has been consistently writing about subjects of interest to me or if their “Playing D&D4e with my kids” post is buried in a bunch of ramblings about PTA meetings and runny noses.

    Gregor LeBlaques last blog post..If a medium size minotaur knocks over a large dragon, is it silly, cool or both?

  12. @James: Hey anytime guys. You do great work and I’m always willing to spread some bro-love to a fellow Québecois blogger.

    @ Gregor: Don’t sweat Greywulf, he’s got weird ideas that somehow work for him…

    Plus, he’s blogging on some strange wiki software…

    I agree that a sidebar is a good navigational tool… that’s why I’m trying to increase readability by posting links to my best series on the sidebar.

  13. Hey, nuthin’ wrong with using a wiki to blog 🙂 I agree, an Archive link is an essential thing for any blog. So’s an “About Me” link too. Put them in a minimal sidebar, at the top of the page, or wherever.

    But seriously, check out how many people actually click through those other links on your sidebar. It’s sobering. Using CommentLuv is a MUCH better solution as that puts the links straight into eyeline of your comment readers.

    But if sidebars work for you, great!

  18. How cool is that? Thanks for the great resources, they come in very handy right now. And, of course, the whole series rocks.

  19. One of the things that absolutely blows my mind is that some people decided to jump in the fray while I was writing this series, joining the latest generation of RPG blogs.

    I feel like a Blogging father… wait I’m already one!

    Thanks one and all for the words of encouragement and the derivative posts you wrote.

    I’ll contact each of you after Gen Con so we can discuss making this into an E-book and becoming published authors.

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