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How to be a popular blogger

By Dr Troppo - posted Wednesday, 2 February 2011


Pick your topics carefully. You need to find stories that everybody’s talking about you’ll need to find them just a little bit ahead of everyone else. Good stories include terrorist attacks, natural disasters, toxic spills, elections and gaffes by politicians or celebrities.

Get outraged

When something bad happens you need to be outraged (interested or mildly concerned just isn’t good enough). Good targets for outrage include politicians, foreign leaders, people smugglers, multinational corporations, bankers, lawyers, greenies, the mainstream media and do-gooding celebrities. If you can’t hold them directly responsible for what happened (eg a tsunami or earthquake), you can at least criticise them for saying something stupid or making the problem worse (eg a politician or celebrity taking up space on aircraft that could be carrying relief supplies).

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Be consistent

Make sure your readers know in advance who the targets of your outrage will be. Pick a small number of people or organisations that you can get angry at every day. For example, Tony Abbott, Obama, Bono, the United Nations or the mainstream media (which we all know is run by left wing intellectuals/the conservative establishment/greedy corporations). Once you’ve chosen your targets be consistent. Just as James Bond fans don’t want to see him seducing other blokes in his new movie, your readers don’t want to suddenly see you batting for the other side.

Have an opinion

When you express an opinion don’t hem and haw. Don’t say "it’s possible that the government’s changes to asylum seeker policy may have encouraged an increase in the number of boats" say "Julia Gillard has blood on her hands …".

Use stereotypes as shorthand

Remember, your readers don’t have time for new ideas. Most of them are dipping into your blog as a way of avoiding work. You have 23 seconds to get their attention and make your point. To help them you should activate their favourite stereotypes. Depending on your audience these could be guilt-ridden greenies who live in inner city terrace houses, cashed up bogans who drive four wheel drives and live in outer suburban McMansions, lonely middle aged tea partiers who keep pictures of Sarah Palin under their bed, or left wing intellectuals who resent the fact that the dumb kids they went to school with now earn more money than they do.

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Be entertaining

Put yourself in your readers place. If you were surfing the web to procrastinate form work, you wouldn’t want to read someone’s PhD thesis would you? If a blog post forces you to think, then it’s not doing its job. As a blogger your mission is to distract, annoy, outrage and entertain. If you can, be witty. Most people who work at a desk don’t find their job amusing.

Learn how to use Google

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This post was first published at the author's blog Club Troppo. It is being published as part of our Best Blogs 2010 feature, which is compiled jointly with Club Troppo.



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About the Author

Dr Troppo is the pseudonym of a moderately well-known blogger.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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