By Michael Pollitt of snipelondon.com
1. London is infinite – There are so many people in so many places doing so many things. All of those people and places and things are potential blog posts. And the city is so big and so old that every street, and the history of every decade of every street, is a potential blog post. London is an infinity of interesting things. The hard part is choosing where to begin.
2. London has some great blogs – These other blogs aren’t competition, that’s not the way it works. If you’re talking about something that’s interesting to people, they’ll read you, and if someone else is talking about it, they’ll read them as well. You can even help them out by linking to each other. It’s not dog eat dog, it’s the more the merrier. This is a nice environment for a blog to grow up in.
3. Blog writers and blog readers are creatures of habit – Personally (and blogs are intensely personal things), I find that the more I blog, the more I want to blog. And the more readers read the blog, the more they want to read. Habitual posting will also prevent your blog from joining the Ozymandian ruins of half-finished blogs which litter the outer deserts of the internet.
4. You can make your own rules but it does help to have some – The great opportunity of blogging is that you can say anything, in any way you want. The great danger of blogging is that you can say anything, in any way you want. It helps to make yourself some rules, such as what topics to focus on, what policy to adopt on exclamation marks, and how many biscuits to reward yourself with for each completed post. Once you’ve done that, you can have some fun finding ways to get around them!
5. Blogging is an underrated way of learning – If you’re curious about how the world works, or in Snipe’s case how London works, then writing a blog is a great way of finding out. It’s like doing a degree, except you get to set all the questions and mark your own answers. You also get to meet some interesting people and muck about with words. That makes blogging fun.
Michael Pollitt is on the panel for Behind the Blog, taking place at the Museum of London on 17 October from 7pm. Behind the Blog will be chaired by Dave Hill, Guardian.co.uk London blogger and political commentator. The discussion will explore what blogging means for Londoners.
Joining Michael and Dave is Now.Here.This. blog editor for Time Out, Sonya Barber; Chloe McCloskey, publishing editor of Le Cool, a popular weekly online magazine; and Ian Mansfield, who writes about interesting things to do and that he has done on his blog IanVisits.
Tickets are £7 and available online and via the box office 020 7001 9844
