The FuzzyBlog!
Marketing 101. Consulting 101. PHP Consulting. Random geeky stuff. I Blog Therefore I Am.

Secrets of a High Volume Blogger!

Several readers of my blog, noticing my almost embarassingly large number of postings, have asked me things like:

1. "Hm...  Not much of a personal life, huh?"
2. "Don't you have a job?"
3. "How fast do you type?"

I'm going to ignore #1.  As far as #2 goes, I am a consultant and work largely from home.  And, while this does isolate me more than a bit from the outside world, it gives me lots of time to blog.  Whenever I have down time between proposal writing, coding and working with clients, I'm likely to be blogging.  And, yes, I type approximately 100 words per minute (not bad for the guy who's only D ever in school was Mrs. Jacobsen's Evil Typing 101).

Still, there definitely are "secrets" (not anymore!) to my "high volume blogging".  Here are some of them.

1. Give Up Television.   Right after I really got into blogging I made a very conscious decision to create not consume media.  I dumped television and most fiction.  But I do still have a serious addiction to Buffy & Angel (and if that means nothing to you then that's just fine, you wouldn't understand).
2. Make a Committment to Blogging Regularly.  When I looked at the blogs I like to read regularly like Jennie and Dave, I saw that the common denominator was regularity.  I like/love these blogs because day in and day out they're always updated.  That's one of the things that brings me back.  And, once a blog's output decreases, I tend to visit it less often.
3. Two Computers.  I always have a laptop and desktop (both Windows 2K) running at all times.  My laptop is dedicated to Blogging and IM and all I have to do is swivel to do either.  It's highly productive since a Radio window is open at all times.
4. Get a Good Chair.  If you're going to do this regularly then spend the $$$ for a decent chair.  I'm embarassed to say how much I'm in my chair so I'm going to avoid that.  If you looked at 1st and last posting times over a span of days though, it wouldn't be hard to figure out.
5. Lots of Browser Windows.   I've been called "Lesser Demi God of Browser Windows" by co-workers (ok, it was more like "TOO MANY WINDOWS AGAIN SCOTT".   For me keeping a lot of windows open at the same time (the Stories window, the New window, the Home window) is highly productive.
6. Make a Personal Home Page.  One of the first things I did was make a personal home page with links to the Radio editing page, my Radio home page and a few other Radio places like UserLand Support, Russ's documentation. 
7. Make a Committment to Learn Radio Well.  It's always amazing to me that people can use a product every day and never learn more than 2 or 3 things about it.  If you're going to blog a lot then it really makes sense to learn Radio well. 
8. Caffeine.  Do I need to say more?
9. Blog Content is all Around You.  Blogging is about text.  And what is email?  Text.   What's IM?  Text.  I've gotten a lot of blog entries out of both these places.  Old writer's trick from Robert Heinlein: Writing is all about filing the edges off a piece of content and then republishing it.  (that's not an exact quote but pretty dang close).
10. Get Inspiration from Anywhere.  I've pulled blog content literally off the backs of trucks on the highway (it's part of an upcoming article on finding sales leads).  Inspiration is all around you.  Everytime something makes you angry or makes you happy, don't be afraid to blog it. 
11. Multitask, Multitask, Multitask.  Along with multiple windows goes multi-tasking.  I've been known to write whole Radio Stories (including this one to be honest) during the context of an IM conversation.  I aggressively multitask every single day.  Or, for me, ALT+TAB is my close friend.
12. Respond to Every Comment You Get.  You've probably seen that my email address and contact info tend to be all over things I write.  I don't have any fear of spam (more on that later) and I find that interacting with people that read this helps clarify my own thinking, I learn new things and then it feeds into more blogging posts.   Just as an example, one of yesterday's things on email let to a fascinating dialog on how what I described is actually illegal in Norway!  Oops!  (for reference it's how you handle email after an employee leaves the company)

To be really honest if you chucked all of these except for #2 then you'd do fine.  Making a decision that this is important and you really want to do it is the biggest thing.