Tips for Effective Blogging and Getting Hits and Stuff

Introduction

A while ago I wrote up a lengthy email to one of my coworkers with tips on effective blogging. Now, I know it may seem like I'm not an expert in getting lots of hits based on this very blog, but keep in mind that this blog is not currently designed to get lots of hits - it's literally just a place for me to shout out into the void whatever's on my mind, regardless of who cares. However, the few times that I have put these tips into practice on my blog, they have been proven to be effective in getting more hits. So I figured I'd share them with you guys, the void, as well.

Okie dokie, here are your lessons:

Blog About Something

Firstly, figure out what you want to blog about. What do you have expertise or interest in that other people will be genuinely interested to read about? This is where I failed, because I created this blog before thinking it through and figured I'd just write whatever came to my mind. Look where that's gotten me. Nobody cares about most of my posts after they're a month old because most of my blog posts are updates on my life and writing progress - things only my family and friends on Facebook really care to read about - but the ones that are most popular are the ones that offer the most amount of people with the most amount of value.

My all-time most read blog post is an advertising critique. Not only did I fill it with keywords to attract web searches, but it combines several topics that people are interested in reading; critique, advertising, smoking, and I may have mentioned the Superbowl at least once, which doesn't hurt my traffic either. My second highest is another ad critique, and my third is a review of the first Fifty Shades of Grey movie. There's a clear pattern here. People love reviews and critiques. They love when somebody is talking to them like friends used to face-to-face before the internet came along and changed the very fabric of social interaction. For a while my largest traffic came from Germans who really, really wanted to read about RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. Not sure why Germans, specifically, but the point is that clearly people were feeling pretty nostalgic (and some game company has since taken advantage of that nostalgia and released a competitor game in the same style) and were looking to read about an old video game.

So, unless you're really, really, really good or already famous, don't write about yourself; pick a topic that is interesting to others. It can be broad (ex: "I review books") or narrow (ex: "I review every vampire book ever published") but it must be interesting to others. Bonus points if you pick a super specific niche and put yourself through agony for others' entertainment, like the aforementioned example of reading and reviewing every vampire book ever.

Utilize Your Metadata

Most of us don't want to spend money on advertising. That's why you'll want to work on your metadata. Metadata is the stuff that search engines (Google, GoDuckGo, and that other one) see and use to categorize your site. IE: use keywords. For example, my current meta description for my blog is "a blog about stuff" which is absolutely terrible, unhelpful, and I can't believe I got this far into lecturing you about how much I know about blogging and SEO when clearly I'm an idiot.

To reiterate, my blog is not currently designed to get hits. Do as I say, not as I do.

Ugh. Anyway. You want to change that to something descriptive and full of relevant keywords like, using the previous example, "books," "vampires," "fantasy," "review," and "reading." These are subjects that you intend to fill most of your blogging with, so that when someone googles "what's the worst vampire book ever written" your website has a better chance of showing up in the results. It will probably show up very low in the results at first, but write good content (more on that in a paragraph) for a while and give it some time. If you don't know where to find your metadata on your site/wordpress itself, put the URL of your blog into any one of those search engine spider simulators that you can find all over the web to find out what it currently is, then search around for how to change it on your domain.

Content is King, or Key, or Crucial, or Whatever

This goes back to what I was just saying above about selecting your topic. If you have something even as specific as "I review books" then you can skip this lesson because you have a good grasp on what you're going to write. Just write really, really good reviews.

If your topic is, despite my advice, less obviously valuable to others - like you want to blog about writing vampire stories - you may be wondering how you can possibly get people to care about little ol' you.

For that, I prescribe that you check out this post I wrote as an example. The post is designed to be like some sort of tutorial for people who are struggling to write the second draft of their novel, except it's really not that at all. That post, like so many others of mine, is just me rambling about the things I'm slowly figuring out in my own writing life. I just tweaked the concept from "here's what I learned" to "here's what you should know" - in doing so, I shift focus from me to you. People Google stuff like "help with second draft" all the time, so when they get to that page they're not reading about someone else struggling with the same problem, but someone who has a solution for theirs. (TWIST: I didn't know what the hell I was doing.)

So the lesson here is that even if you're blogging about you, don't make it about you. Figure out how you can turn your stories and experiences into something that can benefit others, because nobody is going to care about your struggles until you're famous for something and they want to read your detailed backstory so they can flesh out your Wikipedia page.

Oh yeah, and stick to a regular posting schedule so your readers can turn reading your blog into a habit. Be consistent. You want them to return regularly.

Keywords are also Key ... Words

Keywords are super important when writing. You want to include every possible thing that someone interested in your blog post might search for, so use a "related keywords" tool like http://keywordtool.io to find them. For example, if you want to blog about being a fantasy story writer; when I put "fantasy" into that site, I get "fantasy baseball," "fantasy baseball rankings," and "fantasy island" as the top three results, so make sure you don't use the word "fantasy" in your blogging without also including "novel" or "fiction" immediately after it. Specificity will lead to better results because you don't want to get your content mixed up with someone betting on their fantasy league.

Type in "fantasy fiction" into that site, scroll around, and you start to see some better results like "how to write a fantasy fiction novel." Although the actual statistics in these tools are typically locked behind a paywall, it's pretty safe to assume that that's a fairly common internet search by people who you want to visit your blog. Use that to your advantage. Include that phrase and others like it when you can without forcing it (ex: "when I first started learning how to write a fantasy fiction novel...") or just straight up write a blog post titled "how to write a fantasy fiction novel" and make it a really, really good post. Do you catch my drift?

Google is also a great tool for the same thing. Type "fantasy fiction" into Google and either don't press enter so you see the next suggested words or press enter and scroll to the bottom where you'll see:

Searches related to fantasy fiction:
fantasy fiction podcast
fantasy fiction books for adults
fantastic fiction books
fantasy fiction authors
fantasy fiction reddit
fantasy fiction youtube
fantasy fiction online
fantasy fiction podcast wiki

Which gives you a really good idea for what people are looking for when they search for "fantasy fiction" because those are Google's updated popular relevant searches - these are super valuable in telling you what people are looking for right now that you could be providing them with. Use those words and talk about those things whenever you can without sounding forced - rule number one is thou shalt not pander to the Google overlords, so don't just throw keywords into your post if they don't belong. Search engines will actually punish your site for trying to trick them like that.

Do More Research

It absolutely cannot be overstated that everything I'm saying here is really, really basic stuff and doesn't even cover all the rest of the basic stuff. If you really want to be a good blogger, go out and do some more research. Become an expert in your topic and in blogging itself. Maybe team up with some like-minded people to blog as a group so you share the burden and can utilize each other's talents.

Okay, I think that's all I've got for now. Hopefully this wasn't too boring, but I guess that's another lesson; DON'T BE BORING! Even if the subject is kind of dry, spice it up with your personality and photos you took of cute animals!

Best of luck to you!
-Ryan

Camp NaNoWriMo 2017

I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo for the first time this past April. Sorry it's taken me so long to write about it, but I've been somewhat busy lately. More on that some other time, though.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, Camp NaNoWriMo is a more laid-back summertime version of National Novel Writing Month where you set your own writing goal, get grouped into virtual cabins with other writers, and track your writing progress on a particular project over the course of a single month.

The Plan

I intended to use Camp NaNoWriMo as an excuse to finish my NaNoWriMo 2016 novel, because although I actually met my goal for that event, it turned out that my novel was destined to be more than 50,000 words long. Because the 50k word goal is a bit of a strenuous commitment; I decided to set myself a more reasonable goal of 25 hours of writing for camp.

Unfortunately, the website only allows a minimum of 30 hours, so I had to pick that as my goal instead. Still, that seemed doable, and more importantly I figured it was more than enough time needed to spend on my novel in order to finally finish it - it specifically being a second draft that I intend to shop around for publishers upon completion and before torturing myself over any more rewrites.

The Results

It turned out that setting an hour goal instead of a word count goal allowed me to shift my writing priorities in a way that, while helpful, was not conducive to my goal of finishing the actual novel. You see, despite feeling initially confident in the outline I'd laid out for the story when beginning NaNoWriMo 2016, while writing I found myself incredibly dissatisfied with the subplot of the main character's roommate, as well as the roommate herself as a character. Therefor, I ended up using much of Camp NaNoWriMo rewriting that character and her scenes to better fit the story I was trying to tell.  I did get around to writing some new scenes, resulting in a more complete book than I had to begin, but I ended the month with almost the entire final third of the story still unwritten.

What's more is that, as time has gone on, I've found myself increasingly disinterested in the novel as my growing interests pull me toward science fiction stories instead. I still intend to finish it, but the simple fact is that my heart isn't in it like it used to be. Additionally, as I've been developing new stories in my head, I've realized that I've been building this story on a somewhat poor foundation of planning and outlining - by which I mean I wasn't as knowledgeable about conceptualizing what makes a good story when I initially planned it, so it's as if I'm now trying to stack heavy bricks onto various fallen branches that I once found and stuck standing up in the sand. (For those wondering themselves about story structure, I highly suggest reading Dan Harmon's Story Structure as a starting point - a short guide that is available totally free online if you just search for it!)

Ugh, I know, I'm being so angsty and not cool. What can I say? I'm a writer.

Anyway, Camp NaNoWriMo was fun and helpful and I would definitely suggest it to other writers, but it was ultimately not the success I hoped it would be for me, personally. Also, I really wish it was a real thing. Like, I wish there was a month-long writer's summer camp for young adults to go to complete with cabins, bonfires, nature, and writer-based activities guided by published authors.

If any such place or event does exists, please point me in the direction of where I can sign up.

Read some of my short stories based on writing prompts at https://www.reddit.com/r/Yackemflaber/

Her Name Was Lauren Tank.

I just found out today that my dear friend, Lauren Tank, took her own life sometime on Monday.

I didn't know Lauren very long, but as soon as we met I wished we had. We officially first met only a few months ago at work when she recognized me in the elevator as someone who had gone to the same grade/middle school with her, albeit a year apart. It was at the end of the day on our way home, so I didn't get to really respond to her until the next day.

I sent her a message in the work chat system, and right off the bat it was easy to see that she and I had a lot in common, and that she was quite an infectiously delightful person. It also became apparent that, if a friendship were to develop, it would soon be strained by the effects of long distance.

Here is a transcript of the start of that conversation:

December 14, 2016
Matejka, Ryan [8:24 AM]:
Hey! It’s me from the elevator yesterday with the shared dark past.
Tank, Lauren [8:25 AM]:
Haha! Hello! How are you?
Matejka, Ryan [8:25 AM]:
interestingly, Matt in sales(?) was also from StMM
I had to figure out your name using LinkedIn by the way, so you’ve got a request from me there now. I’m doing pretty good though, how about yourself?
Tank, Lauren [8:26 AM]:
I’m pretty fantastic, actually! I’m actually moving to southern California in like three weeks. Sad, though, because I love working here at HBI, but awesome because it’s like 65 degrees over there right now
I guess it sounds like HBI is full of people I knew from different chapters of my life. Elizabeth was in my sorority pledge class in college, you’re here, Matt (who I don’t think I’ve ever heard of) is here, no doubt somebody from my high school is here lurking somewhere
Matejka, Ryan [8:28 AM]:
ugh jealous. Long have I fantasized about moving out west to pursue a career in screenwriting and general awesomeness
I actually have some in-laws out there
Tank, Lauren [8:29 AM]:
You should consider up and doing it someday! Work on screenplays in your spare time over the years and when the time is right, just do it.
Or find any job out there and try to work on film-related things in your spare time

We talked about movies (especially Fight Club), television shows, and how Fall Out Boy's best album is obviously Folie à Deux, no matter what everyone else says! She shared "dank memes" and advice on how to "acquire The Sims 4 from some Swedish friends with a pirate ship, if you get my drift." In return, I filled up her USB stick with episodes of the HBO show Westworld, Chuck Palahniuk e-books, and music by pop-punk band Neck Deep.

Talking to Lauren was the easiest thing in the world. She held nothing back. She made you immediately at ease.

I joined her for lunch on her last day at work. She couldn't stop talking about how excited she was that she was certain her boyfriend was going to propose to her either on Christmas or New Year's Eve. I briefly contemplated asking for a selfie with her to mark the occasion, then shook the thought away because I assumed Lauren was "too cool" for that kind of sentimental bullshit.

We kept in touch after she moved, mostly sharing Rick and Morty memes. I kept asking her if she finally listened to "December [again]" by Neck Deep - a song I was certain she would love, but she would always apologize and say she'd get around to it later.

Today, I logged onto Facebook and was just about to ask her what was up when I scrolled through my wall to find a message from one of her friends wishing that she'd rest in peace. Frantically, I checked her profile page to see that it was full of more of the same messages from friends and loved ones.

I can't describe the feeling. I was in denial. I was sad. I was angry. Even more so I was confused, because not a single post referenced what had actually happened and I'd just spoken to her a few days ago.

I looked up what was the last thing she messaged me:

March 14, 2017
Lauren Tank
I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane
Ryan Matejka
*record scratch sound* so did you ever listen to the songs I sent you?
Lauren Tank
Fuuuck I'm a bad friend. I forgot.
Ryan Matejka
If it makes you feel better I only played a little bit of Sims 4
Lauren Tank
Oh it worked for you? Good!
Ryan Matejka
Yup, and now I've been downloading shit like crazy

Well, it wasn't anything special, but at least I didn't let her end it on "I'm a bad friend," because that just wasn't true.

At this point, I still didn't know exactly what happened to her, but an idea crept into my brain; "please let it be literally anything except suicide."

I'm not a religious man, so the idea of eternal hell wasn't what worried me about suicide so much as the thought of such a bright spot in my life (and likely so many others) spending her last moments in a hopeless misery. She deserved so much better than that.

I left the building and cried. I fell against a wall, buried my head in my hands, and just cried.

No matter what happened, this is a tragedy.

"Life is short, random, and meaningless," I thought to myself. "We'd all do well to remember that and make the best of every second."

I don't believe that Lauren is "in a better place" and I'll never fully understand the mentality behind taking one's own life unless it is to avoid absolutely certain pain and suffering, but I suppose that in Lauren's mind that's what her future held. Depression is a real bitch. It numbs you to your core and prevents you from seeing the possibility of a happy future despite all evidence to that effect. I don't believe that Lauren is "in a better place," but I take a very, very small amount of solace that her suffering is over and that her death was in her own hands and not someone else's. Of course, that still does nothing to diminish the fact that this is, no matter how you slice it, a tragedy.

I'll end on a modified quote that she loved from Fight Club and one of her favorite songs from Folie à Deux.

"In Project Mayhem, we have no names.
But in death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name.
Her name was Lauren Tank."

"That’s the thing about new music - the best tracks are often hidden in albums and much ignored. For example, nobody cares about the song Tiffany Blews off Folie a Deux but it’s suuuuch a great song"

- Lauren Tank

May she rest in peace.