Blogger Recognition Award 3: Blog Hard With A Vengeance

Well well well, look what we have here folks.
Another Blogger Recognition Award.

I don’t mean to brag, but, this is the third one I’ve won now.
Look, some blogs are just better than others. That’s just how it is.
And this happens to be one of the best blogs to ever exist,
second only to The Joe Rogan Experience.

Long post theme:

Honestly, like with other tag posts I’ve responded to recently, I feel like I am above the rules at this point. Which is why I won’t be posting them or properly following them. Who needs rules? It’s 2020.

Of course, I do have to thank Megan from the a Geeky Gal blog for the nomination! We require nominations for posts like this. Thank you for your contribution to this blog Megan!

This post is also sponsored in part by Chris Joynson of Never Argue With A Fish. While I already had this post drafted up and ready to go, I just happened to get nominated by him before posting this. So thanks to you too Chris!

Previous Awards

So this tag is about giving advice in the blogging space.
As I’ve done this tag twice before, you can read my previous pieces of advice and about the history of my blog here:

Celebrating the Blogger Recognition Award

Blogger Recognition Award Celebration (Redux)

I just went back and re-read them myself, having forgotten what exactly I advice I had written earlier this year. I think it’s pretty good advice though, for anyone who is really looking for advice.

More Advice

Niche Posts and Interactivity

This sort of expands on what I touched upon a little in advice from my first blogger recognition award post regarding interaction.

Niche posts do well, or more correctly, they can do well.

Technically, almost anything can be considered a niche so long as it’s not very popular. So there is a little more to it, I think. Not all niches are good niches, but some are. I don’t have a definitive guide on what niche will bring you views and interaction, and what won’t, it really just depends on the niche.

I think that topics that are much more open to analysis, or cover a confusing subject, or leave room for more to be said, are probably a safe bet. Think something that someone will watch, and then afterwards want to look up other perspectives, answers, discussion, et cetera.

As always, my magnum opus, as it were, is my two posts on Makinohara Shouko. Together those two posts are still bringing in traffic, and comments.

You don’t have to read them, but just scroll down and take a look at how many people have chimed in on my Makinohara Shouko Answer post. Some of which are very long. And in fact, I think that the comments section of that post almost contains more information than my actual post at this point. It certainly contains some answers that I hadn’t originally thought up in the original post. (I also just realized I missed responding to one, whoops.)

It’s not just those posts though. The other bulk of comments from outside WordPress are on Monogatari Series posts (mostly on an old, dead blog that still gets comments due to the analysis posts). And then the occasional one on other posts. But the bulk of them are on niche posts, usually analysis.

Anyways, that’s the pattern I’ve noticed. You take a niche topic that has depth, write a post that dives in, and wait for the readers to come.

It’s not always a sure thing, but I can honestly say that when I decided to write analysis posts for all of the characters of the Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai anime, I knew my posts were going to do well. I have the Discord logs of messages I sent back then to Lynn to prove it too, although I can’t be bothered to go back and get them.

And, they did do well. Still are!

Text Formatting

Text formatting is important to consider when writing a post. How much text should you write before starting a new paragraph? I remember that in school, the textbook answer was something like 5 – 8 sentences.

But I don’t think that number holds true anymore, at least on the internet. People’s attention spans are much shorter. Our eyes dart around and we take in information so quickly, scrolling through feeds on various online platforms, that 5 – 8 sentences feels like too much.

For me personally, just the sight of a wall of text immediately triggers an internal reaction – “do I really care about this enough to attempt reading it?”. And usually in the span of a split second, I’ll either make the attempt, or I’ll decide to “nope” out of there and move on. And that attempt might end up failing, as partway through I may still decide “yep, nevermind I’m not reading this“.

Walls of text are awful, and they require focus – something that you don’t normally need when just mindlessly scrolling through tweets or images or whatever.

As sad as that sounds, the fact is, the more interested we are in a topic, the more likely we are to invest time in reading about it. If we aren’t interested, or don’t know what we are looking at, we’re more likely to not bother putting the effort into reading it.

If you look at my “paragraphs”, they’re much shorter than 5 – 8 sentences. This is because I believe that each paragraph should only contain one idea. It’s not always possible, but it’s what I generally try to do when I write.

I don’t even think it’s solely to accommodate short attention spans, which is certainly a big aspect. I also think that breaking up ideas into separate paragraphs just makes it easier to follow everything. It’s so easy to get lost in a wall of text, especially on a computer or phone screen.

There are so many blog posts that I’ve come across where I see these massive, seemingly insurmountable walls of text, and I wonder if different formatting would have led to me actually reading them. Generally, I have to be really invested or curious to attempt climbing one of those walls. Normally, I don’t bother.

And that’s just the truth.
Walls of text are a pain.

If you break up a wall of text into more manageable paragraphs, then the reader’s perception of how much time it will take to read will change.

Remember, the more interested we are in a topic, the more likely we are to invest time in reading about it. Anything you can do to reduce that perceived time investment is probably worth it.

My personal writing style, of one general idea per paragraph, may not work for everyone. But I do think that managing text formatting is important, and that it’s something many bloggers, especially many new blogs that I come across, should be mindful of.

Nominations

I’ve been slacking on nominating others lately, so let’s give this a whirl here:

• EggheadLuna of EggheadLuna’s Blog
• Aizen_Kuro of It’severythinganime
• Animegirl of Perfectanime
• Ethan_07 of Anime as a Cup of Tea
• AngryJellyfish of AngryJellyfish’s Blog
• AK of Everything is bad for you
• Ospreyshire of Ospreyshire’s Realm
• iniksbane of In Search of Number Nine
• GeatsxShogun of Fortress William
• Chris Joynson of Never Argue with a Fish
• Tiger of TigerAnime
• Traditional Catholic Weeb of… The Traditional Catholic Weeb!
• Yomu of Umai Yomu Anime Blog
• Lynn of The Otaku Author

I’m sure you all know the drill.
You’ve been nominated, do whatever you’d like with it!
(You’ll have to visit Megan or Chris’ post nominating me if you want the rules)

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And that concludes my third installment of the Blogger Recognition Award.
Thanks again to Megan and Chris Joynson for giving me the nomination required to cash in on another one of these posts.

Until next time,
Thanks for reading!