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I didn’t get a chance to read it until today (part of that time snippet thing you mentioned). I, too, am curious to know what the disagreement is about. I particularly liked this part:

If the majority of your content is made up of disagreeing with people, you should question your motives for blogging.

If you actually derive pleasure from bashing others, you should just quit.

If your blog regularly makes you enemies, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being persecuted for Jesus. It may just mean you’re a jerk.

There are some super popular “mommy blogs” that do this very thing. I finally had to stop reading them and in good faith couldn’t link to them. They cause more trouble than they solve…

Sorry, Abraham.
I tried to honor you request, but after reading through your list three times and not finding anything I disagree with, I ended up bookmarking the post.

The only potential negative (really more of a qualification) is the sense some may get that you are completely against longer (than 22-word) posts. I love the diligence required in saying this in a ‘nugget’ format. But, some things cannot be explained or said in a few sentences.

The blogosphere does have the potential of reducing the gospel to cheap soundbites–but it also has the power to allow reader to quickly grasp short, memorable phrases to illuminate that same gospel.

Why do we feel we can expect a person to sit through a 45 minute sermon but somehow impossible to expect them to read a 400 word post?

There is a time to be short, and a time to be long—there is room on a blog for both. It allows some to quickly scan, and others to deeply dig.

Other than that qualification, I found little to disagree with.

Josh, I agree with you without reservation.

I think a blogosphere full of 22-word posts wouldn’t be an improvement. My word limit is admittedly hyper-corrective.

I think a well-written 200-500 word post is just about ideal. Then there should of course be exceptions on both ends of that spectrum. (My article was obviously an exception.)

Also, I would add that even long posts should be accessible in just a few seconds. For instance, my article was about 1200 words–that’s 5 minutes of reading. But if someone only wanted to give it 20 seconds, they could scan down the list and get pretty much the whole gist.

I enjoyed your post immensely. Especially when I checked my own stats and realized most readers spent an average of 40 seconds reading my posts! Good-bye long-winded. Hello brevity.

My only disagreement is that I don’t take myself (or my blog) too seriously. I guess I don’t have any grand ambitions—I just share my life & faith through real stories. Maybe I’m a “fishing in Alaska” type?

Well, since you asked (my apologies for not formatting the text of clarity):

1. Blog uniquely. – I’m a strong advocate of this, and I think a strong example of it. I think. You can’t mistake my blogging for someone else’s I am sure – and people who try to be like me fail.

I think the right version of this piece of advice is “be yourself”. The reason is that trying to be like someone else is both creepy and unsustainable. Just be yourself.

Agree: 1 Disagree: 0

2. Don’t let the importance of truth minimize the importance of presentation. – Eh. Personally, I’d rather read something which is right on the money in its point with a little skin in the game which could have used an editor for spelling or organization than, for example, a very tight but bloodless book review which sounds like Macintalk Pro English Bruce either wrote it or was intended to read it.

Maybe my objection here is to what I think Abraham is trying to say rather than what he actually said. In one sense I think presentation is important because I think writing is itself a worthy pursuit. But I hate reading any Bronte and I love reading Dickens; I love reading Shaw and I hate reading Congreve.

And this is why I love the Bible, btw: it’s literature with some skin in the game. It’s not afraid to say stuff like, “Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall not eat just one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected the LORD who is among you,” and “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened,” and “Arise, O LORD! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.”

So maybe I think Abraham is right in principle and wrong in application, as I see it.

Agree: 1.5 Disagree: 0.5

3. Be familiar with the blog genre and write for it. – Yeah, I think this is wishful thinking. The “blog genre” is populated by about 9 million blogs or something like that, and I’ll bet that 8.97 million of them don’t conform to what Abraham would here define as “blog genre”. He might argue that the 30,000 “successful” blogs (mine would be among those, based on hits and links) has something in common, and one ought to emulate those, but I think that “successful” is a very subjective term.

For example, when I am posting consistently – when I have the time to post 4 essays a week and fill in with clever content the other 7 days to post up to 10 times a week – I can get 500 hits a day without poking iMonk in the eye. And for some, that’s success.

But honestly: I can point to about 5 or 6 times in the last 4 years in which I would say the blog actually “succeeded” because of a handful of emails I have received. “cent, thanks for reminding me that my church is supposed to be like a family to me;” “cent, thanks for reminding me that my wife is supposed to be precious to me as the church is precious to Christ;” “cent, thanks for reminding me that God loves.”

And those bits and pieces were not about presentation: they were about the message being as clear as possible.

Agree: 1.5 Disagree: 1.5

4. Use interesting and informative titles – That’s a technical matter which, frankly, is only useful for churning the search engines and chumming for new readers.

So if that’s what “better blogging” is, do that. It seems to me that this looks a lot like the art of filling the sign in front of your church rather than blogging. I think someone should try writing a blog with no subject lines but with really good content to see if the latter can overcome the former.

Agree: 1.5 Disagree: 2.5

5. Write to process your thoughts, but don’t post to process – I think it’s ironic (not to take a poke at iMonk here, even though I am sure it will be read that way) that someone who links to the iMonk and BHT will say this out loud. What are those blogs but a historical record of posts intended to process?

I agree with the affirmation; I disagree that Abraham really believes it. Let the stoning of me for saying so begin.

Agree: 1.5 Disagree: 3.5

6. Set yourself some kind of limit as you write.
-and-
7. Think nugget-sized posts – Pheh. That’s not writing. That’s not even journaling: that’s quipping. I think you can’t agree with 1 and 2 and consistently affirm or recommend 6 and 7.

The average one-page magazine article has about 800 words in it – that’s about 3 pages typed, double-spaced. I think anyone who is writing less than that consistently isn’t writing but merely scribbling; I think anyone who can’t say what he has to say in 800 words (which is someone I turn out to be about half the time) either ought to write a book or ought to assess how important his opinion really is.

I do the latter all the time, and am always considering the former.

And I say that to say this: the average John Piper sermon is 10 pages at 11pt verdana, double-spaced. 3500 words. If what you have to say isn’t that important or that well-organized, use fewer words. If what you have to say is at least as important as the average Walter Williams essay, use that many words. If all you want to do is smile and wave, read this post by me and then do what you will.

Agree: 1.5 Disagree: 5.5

8. Syndicate your whole feed – If your blog is really interesting, people just want to know that you have actually posted something, thus they use a feed reader. If your blog is inconsistently interesting the matter of how much you syndicate may matter to those who find you occasionally, um, slowing down the global bandwidth.

I say write in a more interesting way on more interesting subjects and you’ll get more readers, feed and otherwise. And for the record: the Gospel is the most interesting subject on the planet, so write about it.

Agree: 1.5 Disagree: 6.5

9. Keep in mind that the blogosphere is not a boys club – says the son of the globally-famous pastor. As criticized by the friend of the globally-famous editor and ministry director.

I think one of the few really-valuable insights that iMonk has offered to the blogosphere is that the blogosphere is, in fact, a small circle of people talking to each other and mostly about each other. Whether that is good or not is for others to decide.

It would be nice if the Blogosphere was really as purely-democratic as I think Abraham is implying here, but it’s about 30% meritocracy (good writers get readers), 30% nepotocracy (if you know a guy and he’s got readers, you can get readers) and 40% controvertocracy (if you poke the right guy in the eye and he notices you, you get readers).

I’m not sure any of that is actually good in the moral or spiritual senses, but I am sure that Abraham is wrong about the ways people get readers in the blogosphere.

Agree: 1.5 Disagree: 7.5

10. Let the general flavor of your blog be positive, not contentious – I don’t think this inherently makes your blog “better”, but I’m actually going to agree with Abraham on this one for one simple reason: watchblogs are horrible. Even if you agree with what any given watchblogger says 97% of the time, these blogs are the internet equivalent of scandal sheets.

It may or may not make your blog “better”, but I am 100% confident that if there were fewer actual “watchblogs” out there, the internet would be better.

And while I am tagging this as “agreement” with Abraham, let me also say this: it is one thing to always be on about this error or that lite-weight “pastor”, and it is another thing entirely to make affirmative statements of doctrine or practice, speak truthfully about those affirmations, and then speak honestly about why such an affirmation is necessary by way of negative example. The latter makes a clear point and a public statement about truth; the former is simply complaining.

Nobody likes a complainer.

Agree: 2.5 Disagree: 7.5

11. Be both confident and reasonably open-minded.

Agree: 3.5 Disagree: 7.5

12. Recognize that it’s OK to take blogging seriously and to try to succeed.

Agree: 4.5 Disagree: 7.5

Thanks for asking.

Oh brother — “9 million blogs”. I corrected that to “89 million blogs” in one draft, and then posted the wrong draft.

Dude. ugh.

Oh brother — and not one link made the final draft. Hang on.

This is the blog advice post I meant to link to.

This is the sample of my blog from archive.org where it is presented very badly.

This would be a post from that era of my blog which overcame the sad state of the template.

Sorry about that. Wow.

Frank,
You have a blog? Sweet!

I didn’t really disagree with anything either.. though I didn’t fully embrace all of them. Okay, is that just a fancy way of being disagreeable?

For the most part I really appreciated what you had to say. Good writing isn’t really something I’ve paid attention to on my main blog, which is over a year old - stats and readers and serving others really wasn’t a motivation. It was more of, just a place to socialize and hopefully be a shining light at the same time.

Now that I’ve started my second blog, which I hope to grow into a great resource of truth, I’m paying attention to things like “writing for the reader.”

I’ve posted my thoughts on good blog writing here:
Brevity, Better Content, and Other Blogging Basics

i did quite agree with your 12 thoughts. i don’t quite understand why some people took issue with so many of them, but they’re entitled.

also, i think you have “convicted” me of writing posts in all lowercase letters… i really hate capital letters, but i suppose that is beyond legitimate preference and into the realm of weird idiosyncrasy. (maybe idiosyncrazy.)

all-lowercase comments, though, i am not convicted about. yet.

oh, and i wrote a post that’s loosely based on your point #9 (i post this in all trepidation):
http://copiosa.blogspot.com/2008/04/boys-and-girls-and-blogging.html

Marc:

I know– is that cool or what?

Abraham
Someone sent me this link last night and it was good to read your article and this thread.

I do thank Frank is offering some very good insight into your post. I for the most part agree with his assessment.

Here is a possible alternative to your “12 steps”:

1. Blog Truthfully - Let your blog as a Christian represent accurately the Word of God cut straight. Think biblically, not culturally.

2. Substance is always more important than style - Don’t make the visual of presentation more important than it is; spend the vast majority of your time on content.

3. The message, not the audience is sovereign. Don’t write for the way they people read you will end up dumbing down the Word; and anyway, that’s being a bit of a chameleon unnecessarily. In the long run doesn’t foster respect.

4. Titles… shmitles. People don’t follow titles, they follow truth claims. The title should rightly reflect the content of your post–but it is not THE drawing card for readership. Pragmatics is the great foe of biblical Christianity in the blogosphere. Don’t seek to be clever; just seek to be clear.

5. As you write you will process your thoughts; you will learn as you unfold your topic. This is your education as well - you are a learner. Having a blog doesn’t give you authority; it gives you a potential platform. Don’t take yourself too seriously–but take the Lord and His truth very seriously.

6. Don’t set any limits on your writing. Some posts demand 100 words; others might demand 3,000 words. The theme you are addressing will inherently provide its own limitations. Write tight; let your yes be yes and your no be no–even if it means cranking out 10 pages.

7. Don’t think bite-size truth. Truth by nuggets should only be available at McDonald’s. Good exposition of a text of Scripture or addressing an important theological issue in the blogosphere takes more than giving people bite-size Bible. If you don’t have the time to write, then don’t. Even a fool is considered wise by remaining silent. If you find that your article is quite long, divide it into several parts. But don’t ever think that people can’t endure longer articles–they can.

8. You don’t have to syndicate your whole feed. Just the title and a few key lines will suffice.

9. The great thing about the blogosphere is that it does not have to be age, gender, or culturally specific. It is a world-side medium of communication. Don’t play politics with your blog as many do. Speak the truth in love regardless of the fallout of praise you might receive. This applies to the meta as well. Don’t ignore anyone. If you post an article be prepared to answer anyone who gives of their time to invest on your blog. Be respectful of their comments, even if you passionately disagree with them.

In the end, we all do this for an Audience of One.

10. Don’t seek to make your blog positive, seek to make it Christlike. Somedays it will encourage; other days it will offend; some days it will edify; and still others exhort. Look at our Lord’s life and ministry. He is comforting to an adulterous woman; but then gives seven damning woes to the scribes and Pharisees in Mt. 23. Be Christlike; and remember, truth is more important than tone… even though tone is important.

11. Research your topic well- this will produce an authority and boldness in your writing. But remain teachable also. We all have blind spots and should welcome the criticisms of others–no matter how harsh or unkind they may seem.

12. Do it all to the glory of God. You don’t have to be the best; but whatever you do, do it with all your might to exalt Christ and bring honor to His gospel.

Grace and peace,
Steve
2 Cor. 4:5-7

PS - Tim Brister quoted you in an article of his recently saying, “don’t bury the gospel in your blog.” Is that correct? I agree with your statement completely - excellent.

In light of that, I have read through several of your articles here brother and have not seen one focused on the gospel yet. Have I missed this inadvertently or are you still contemplating on writing about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Thanks.

3 Words for you……Pictures, Pictures, Pictures
that way I don’t have to read…..I can just visually peruse.

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