It’s Friday! That Report Will Wait
Hello again boys and girls, Unicorns and children of all ages, it’s Brent here, escaping Strictly Average to lower the value of Blood of Kittens with my inane little weekly offering called On Blogging.
If you’ve followed the series… okay, who am I kidding? If I’m lucky you’ve maybe read one or two posts as harmless escapism from your job.
Your boss should have known better than give you internet access, am I right?
Anyway, normally I run down a successful blogger and beg him to give you tips to use – rules of the road, as it were. It’s the real purpose of the series, these tips, but they’re all wrapped up in my over-long and rambling writing style so you may have missed them.
No worries; today’s article is short and to the point, but before we can move on let’s examine where we’ve been.
What Has Come Before…
Together we looked at three successful bloggers: B.SMoove from A Gentleman’s Ones, Dethtron from Dick Move, and Kirby from 3++ is the New Black.
My madness there was a method to, as the preeminent philosopher of far, far away and a long time ago would say. I love all three of these blogs, though for different reasons.
A Gentleman’s Ones is a first-rate hobby blog, chock full of awesome models and with plenty of eye candy. There’s the standard articles made oh so much better by B.SMoove’s technique, such as Painting Rust and Painting Blood… but really all that is just the opening act. This is a dude who’s actually inventing clever shit to do, like Hailed vs Hated, which is a narrative battle report between bloggers separated by a few thousand miles, and The Sin of Alacrity, which is a narrative Kill Team mission in a freakin’ Space Hulk. Seriously!
Dick Move is a… hell, I don’t know what it is. Does it have a name? In my article, I called it the anti-anti-establishment blog; I’ll stand by that. Dick Move is so harshly funny even the victims of a good snowmobiling can’t help but love it. Dethtron is one of a handful of Internet Personalities I consider a chum, but that still doesn’t leave me free of the lingering paranoia that comes from knowing a man who’s made his mark by poking people-sized holes in fanboi-ego.
Then and finally there is 3++ is the New Black, ably led by Kirby, Dictator for Life of the Pink Army. I called this what it is, one of the only great Collaborative Compendium blogs out there. Articles on army design and competitive play are the hardest to write, primarily because the audience for them is voracious but also opinionated and critical; you have to know your game before taking on this subject. Kirby not only knows his but has surrounded himself with like minds… who are actually willing to write!
That segues nicely into the Golden Rule of On Blogging…
Nobody Loves Thy Offering More Than Thee!
That’s it, really, “One rule to rule them all.” (That was bad, I know!)
The series could end here and I’d feel like I’d done right by you.
…
Who am I kidding? Naturally it won’t end here – I’m an attention-seeking net-stalker I am! What would I do with the extra few hours a week if I didn’t have you here at Blood of Kittens?
Sad, I know.
The point is there is a point. I brought you three successful but very different blogs; the common feature of each is the amount of effort each blogger puts in.
B.SMoove is very systematic in his approach, planning out his posts a week at a time. Consider though: he has to paint the miniatures, then take and process the pictures, and finally sit down to write his posts. He sticks to his schedule and, with the sole exception of his vacation, has never failed to post 4 times a week.
At first glance, Dethtron has the easiest job of the three. After all, just makes fun of people, right? Set aside your preconceived notions; DT sinks a ton of effort into Dick Move each week. Friday Night Internet Fights takes literally hours of effort each week… for… one… post! It’s his most popular offering, of course but it became so because of his high standards. I helped out one week, and on the first ever multiple snowmobiling to boot! Dethtron uploaded the thread to a Google Doc and invited me and Lauby to pitch in. Kirby showed up eventually, and we all bleed colors and bad jokes all over the thing. That was four people on one document – four – and it took us all night to do. We finished up at 1 in the morning and DT still had to format the thing and add a ton of pictures.
Then there’s Kirby. He’s got help but in a way it doesn’t make his job any easier. He leads by example, posting at least once a day and many times twice or more! And these aren’t bullshit, personality-centered turdlets like my usual offering on Strictly Average; Kirby and Co. post no shit solid articles for the competitive player. Like I pointed out above, it ain’t easy… if that audience detects any sign of weakness, they’ll devour the little offering then storm away in a pissy huff, talking shit the whole time.
As an aside, I think that’s half the reason Stelek can be so moody; Yes the Truth Hurts is the patron saint of the WAAC Seal-and-Bunny-Beater-Uppers out there. The ZombY Master must maintain his iron control of the Big Blue Shark Tank!
But there’s a huge, big, overwhelming problem with the blog. One I simply can’t ignore any longer; be here next week when I point out the major flaw in the biggest, bluest blog of them all!
Here’s the final word.
Blogging is easy; lots of them out there suck wind. The trick is writing a blog someone will want to read and that isn’t easy at all – it’s brutal. It’s really, really hard work. There’s no real secret here; if you want to succeed, you’d better decide right out the gate to work your ass off. Nobody will do it for you…
…because no one will love your blog the way you do. So I hope you like it, you’re gonna marry it!
That’s it then; the Golden Rule! Am I wrong? Do you care? Do you think Stelek trusts me enough to give me the benefit of the doubt for a week… or (as I suspect) will he even care? Let’s hear what you have to say – or more specifically, read what you have to write!