{"id":3221,"date":"2007-03-15T02:01:48","date_gmt":"2007-03-15T09:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/23\/4-ways-to-make-your-blog-really-annoying\/"},"modified":"2007-03-15T02:01:48","modified_gmt":"2007-03-15T09:01:48","slug":"4-ways-to-make-your-blog-really-annoying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/2007\/03\/15\/4-ways-to-make-your-blog-really-annoying\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Ways to make your blog really annoying"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think there are plenty of guides to good writing out there, I won’t tell
\nyou about that.\u00a0 You know that if you want people to read your blog you need to
\nhave either great writing skills or unique content (note that I don’t claim to
\nhave either).\u00a0 Attracting readers is simple… driving them away is even
\neasier.\u00a0 So, if you’re starting to\u00a0cringe at\u00a0the cost of your bandwidth or if
\nyour artist friends think you’ve sold out… don’t fret, I have the answer for
\nyou.\u00a0 Read on to learn how to drive users away from your blog.<\/p>\n

1. Play hide and seek with the RSS feed
\n<\/strong>Hide the RSS link
\n(or don’t show one at all).\u00a0 Take, for example, the subscription link on\u00a0this
\npage (I’m not sending any traffic their way… they annoyed me):<\/p>\n

\"where's<\/a><\/p>\n

The link is hard to find because it’s just a text link and it’s overshaddowed
\nby the visual clutter of throwing up every feed icon under the sun.\u00a0 Honestly,
\nif you have to, read the Feed Icon Guidelines on
\nMozilla.org<\/span><\/a> (but if you have to, you probably just don’t get it).<\/p>\n

It’s quite simple, for your feed, put up a
\nstandard web feed icon<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0similar to this \"RSS<\/a>
\nor this \"RSS<\/a>.
\nHeck, the icon recognizable enough that you can even change the color to suit
\nyour sense of style: \"RSS<\/a><\/p>\n

2. Make RSS completely useless<\/strong>
\nIf you put no useful info
\nin your RSS feed, what’s the point of offering a feed?\u00a0 Fine, if you want to
\npull peopel to your web page so you get ad revenue, great.\u00a0 Even better, put ads
\nin your feed (e.g. use feedburner).\u00a0 But one certain way to loose readers for
\ngood is to do what CNN does on\u00a0many posts, put this as the only content of the
\nRSS feed:<\/p>\n

\"useless<\/p>\n

Read full story for latest details?!?!? What kind of crap is that?\u00a0 No, I
\ndon’t think I’ll read the full story. \u00a0In fact, I think I’ll unsubscribe from
\nall the CNN feeds and subscribe to the Reuters and BBC feeds instead.<\/p>\n

3. Provide links with zero context<\/strong>
\nYou’ve put a link up
\non your blog.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 Um… why?<\/p>\n

If you make a post that is simply a link and don’t tell the readers if you
\nthink the target content is cool, useful… or at least tell what it is people
\nare just playing a guessing game.<\/p>\n

Three years ago there weren’t many blogs, and those that existed may not be
\nupdated frequently.\u00a0 These days even dogs have their own blogs.\u00a0 If you are just
\nposting links, go to del.ico.us.\u00a0 Vapid content, go to twitter<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 The world is pumping out a ton of
\ninformation and we don’t have time to sort through empty posts or, as Omar
\nlearned on parental leave<\/span><\/span><\/a>, process feeds which post a thousand times a
\nday.<\/p>\n

Time is short, make your content count.<\/p>\n

4. Load your page up with every single profile icon you can
\nfind
\n<\/strong>We’re all guilty of it… we sign up for some nifty service…
\nthey offer a special link to add to our web page and, like sheep, we do it.
\nYes, I’ve done it.\u00a0 But honestly, do you really want to see a page crowded with
\nlinks to Technorati, LinkedIN, Xbox Live, Twitter…?<\/p>\n

Human beings are pack animals, that’s a given.\u00a0\u00a0We\u00a0identify our affiliations
\nby the flags we\u00a0fly, the clothes we wear and, now, by the extra crap we put on
\nour blog.\u00a0 The extra details are great, but they don’t need to be on your front
\npage… put them in an “about me” section (they are, after all, just that).\u00a0\u00a0The
\nfront page should be about content.\u00a0\u00a0I know it’s in our nature, but resist
\nflashing your geek gang signs on the front page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think there are plenty of guides to good writing out there, I won’t tell you about that.\u00a0 You know that if you want people to read your blog you need to have either great writing skills or unique content (note that I don’t claim to have either).\u00a0 Attracting readers is simple… driving them away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}