Category: Blogging

Tired blogger in search for salty licorice

Sometimes when researching some arcane topic for this nine-year-old series of weekly essays, I get tired. No, not ‘tired of,’ as predictive text tried to anticipate. Just tired, much as political commentator Ronni Salt says in the ironic intro to her Twitter/X page – ‘I used to investigate stuff but got tired of it.’

While Ronni Salt continues (see The Shot), today I’m declaring this the penultimate (second-last) weekly FOMM. Don’t all go ‘Nooo’ at once. Nine years is a good innings and it is starting to feel like a chore. I am also finding myself repeating topics I have already vented about. The last weekly FOMM will be posted on September 1, which nicely coincides with a week away in Sydney without having to think ‘What will I write about this week and should I take my laptop?’)

The website www.bobwords.com.au will remain in place until the next web host subscription is due (November 2024).

It’s unlikely this is a complete end to my following current affairs and fulminating about this or that. A rogue column or two may sporadically emerge. You may find new songs emerging on our sister website – thegoodwills.com or on Bandcamp, as one sign of new-found liberation.

I decided to refresh my research into what I have been competing with for people’s attention. Not that Friday in My Mind counts as a blog – it’s too long, earns no money, is posted only once a week, has no ‘target audience’ as such and my attention to SEO (search engine maximisation) is fairly scant.

People find it by accident and while there are a few hundred who never miss it, there are those who have only read 6% to 10% of regular posts.

Nevertheless, I apparently have hundreds of followers on various social media portals. Given the sheer weight of blogs/rants which abound on social media, though, I suspect FOMM will, like the little list song from The Mikado, never will be missed.

Statistics on blogging make my head spin. Let me run a few of these by you (stats can be found on most online marketing company websites).

The global number of blogs is over 600 million (more or less where it was when I started in 2014), according to Firstsite.com. There are  32.7 million bloggers in the US alone and every day 7 million blogs are posted on the Internet.

There’s work in that ‘space’ for all those former newspaper reporters, that’s for sure. Most corporate, small business and startup websites maintain a blog and I assume they pay people to write them. Here’s one example, a website called Clever Girl Finance (Our mission is to empower women to achieve financial success). I started to browse through this website and realised it is based in the US. But it’s a good example of a professional website where articles are not only written but edited and fact-checked! (Who has the time for that, eh!)

I did also find this list of 10 Australian personal finance/financial planning blogs, few of which I have ever consulted, but it’s an interesting ‘space’ to investigate.

WordPress remains supreme among blogging platforms, controlling 43% of the world’s online blogs. But it’s a clunky app/programme. If your WordPress website is truly ‘broken’ you will have to pay an expert to fix it. Every time you update to the latest version, you should always do a backup, as WordPress itself advises. Updates have been known to ‘break’ websites.

OptinMonster, an online marketing company, is another source, among many, that periodically reminds readers of the powerful statistics behind blogging. For example, about 70 million posts are published each month by WordPress users (four or even five of which were mine).

Reader like commenting on  blogs – 77 million opinions every month. (My experience in the first year was that 95% of comments were spam. After I found out how to block Olga from Sweden and Svetna from Slovakia, legitimate website comments were few and far between).

The average blog post takes 3.5 hours to write, ‘they’ say. You could safely double that for FOMM, much of the effort going into fact checking and proof reading. (Yay me. ED) Even when this happens, occasional hiccups occur. Last week, I referred to a 23m wind turbine tower, the zero at the end having been whisked away by an errant August westerly. Thanks Randall for pointing that out. (Ed was asleep at the wheel?)

This statistic I knew about – bloggers who write articles of 2,000+ words are far more likely to have strong results. (I started with 1200 words and on occasions drift out to 1400 or 1500. Nobody notices.)

For a while I subscribed to platforms which encourage fulsome writing – Long Reads, Medium, The Big Round Table, The Atlantic etc. Without exception, I fell away from following them as my inbox became cluttered.

I should warn that some of these essays run to 15,000 words, so are best read on a tablet with an e-book reader.

The experts reveal that while 77% of people say they read blogs on a regular basis, 43% admit to skimming blog posts. The nature of online posts, many of which use bullet points, lists, videos and photos to convey their message, encourages this skim-reading.

OptinMonster came up with this reassuring statistic; that while  46% of bloggers edit their own work, 54% have editors or have at least shown their work to someone else to review.

Elsewhere, you will find statistics that suggest the average blogger will last two years before deciding they are scattering pebbles into the ocean and barely causing a ripple. They either tire of the work involved, become discouraged by the paltry income or (more commonly), move on to other things.

I have a couple of bloggers on my list of recommended reads who have been writing longer than I have and show no signs of giving it away. Unlike me, they have books to sell and reputations to uphold.

At this point, I have no thoughts at all on how to end this long-running column/blog other than to say the final episode will be posted next Friday. Suggestions welcome!

In the interim, you might like to delve into the FOMM archives, or better still amuse yourselves with this account of an overseas junket by a New York Times writer.

Here, to prove you can actually be assigned to travel to Finland to write about such things, is Mark Binelli’s lengthy investigation into the origins of salty licorice and why some people cannot be without it.

We grew up living down the road from a Dutch family who received regular care packages from home, including that peculiar sweet (I wouldn’t call it sweet. Ed) treat. It is definitely an acquired taste. The upside is you don’t have to share with others! (True love is also buying one’s spouse salted licorice when one indulges in their love of Rocky Road…Ed.)

(PS: the local sweet shop stocks mild, double and triple strength, and no, they are not paying me to write that).

From the archives (2) Blogging and human rights

blogging-human-rights
Iranian protest photo Christopher Rose

In case you were curious, the word blog in Farsi looks like this – وبلاگ. Iranians who didn’t like the way things were going in their country started وبلاگ’ing like crazy after the 2000 crackdown on Iranian media. Iranians who interact with the internet are by definition risk-takers.
Photo Christopher Rose
As recently as late 2016, five Iranians were sentenced to prison terms for writing and posting images on fashion blogs. The content was decreed to ‘encourage prostitution’.
The Independent quoted lawyer Mahmoud Taravat via state news agency Ilna that the eight women and four men he represented received jail time of between five months to six years. He was planning to appeal the sentences handed down by a Shiraz court on charges including ‘encouraging prostitution’ and ‘promoting corruption’.

The immediacy of blogging appeals to those who live under oppressive regimes. They use the online diary to inform the world of the injustices in their country as and when they happen. I cited Iran (Persia) as just one example of a country where expressing strong opinions contrary to the agenda of the ruling government is extremely risky business.
The founder of Iran’s blogging movement, Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian blogger, spent six years in prison (the original sentence was 19 and a half years), before being pardoned by Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Derakhshan also helped promote podcasting in Iran and appears to have been the catalyst that spawned some 64,000 Persian language blogs (2004 survey). Clearly there is/was a level of dissent among people who think the right to free speech is worth the risk of incarceration or worse.

Blogging can be a lot of things in Australia, but risky it rarely is, so long as you are mindful of the laws regarding defamation and contempt of court. Not so for bloggers or citizen journalists of oppressed countries who try to get the facts out.
It is no coincidence that most of the countries guilty of supressing free speech are among the 22 countries named by Amnesty International as having committed war crimes. They include Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan and, closer to home, Myanmar, where persecution and discrimination persists against the Rohingya. Amnesty’s national director Claire Mallinson told ABC’s The World Today that not only are people being persecuted where they live, 36 countries (including Australia) sent people back into danger after attempts to find refuge.
Amnesty’s 450-page Human Rights report for 2015-2016 does not spare Australia from criticism, particularly our treatment of children in custody, with Aboriginal children 24 times more likely to be separated from their families and communities. We are also complacent when it comes to tackling world leaders and politicians accused of creating division and fear.

Still, at least if you live in Australia you can openly criticise something the government is doing (or not doing), apropos this week’s Q&A and the Centrelink debt debate.
According to literary types who seem to have warmed to my turn of phrase, FOMM is not a blog as such, but an example of ‘creative nonfiction’ which I am told is not only a genre, but also something taught at universities.
I never knew that.
Bloggers in comfortable democracies like ours use blogs to write about cats, dogs, goldfish, cake recipes, fashion, yoga, raising babies, travel adventures and produce how-to manuals about anything you care to name.
The definition of a blog is ‘a regularly updated public website or web page, typically run by an individual or small group, written in an informal or conversational style.’
Scottish comedian and slam poem Elvis McGonagall, who you met last week, satirises the blog format with this entry.
Monday:
Woke up. Had a thought. Dismissed it. Had another. Dismissed that. Stared at the cows. The cows stared back. Scratched arse. Shouted at telly. Threw heavy object at telly. Had a wee drink. Had another. Went to bed.
Tuesday to Sunday – repeat as above

The definitive blog is an online daily diary, kept by people while travelling, carrying out some stated mission like preparing for an art exhibition, producing an independent album, dieting or training for a triathlon. Most of these literary exercises are abandoned at journey’s end, or on completion of the mission. A fine example of this is folksinger John Thompson’s marathon effort to post an Australian folk song each day for a year. He did this from Australia Day 2011 to January 26, 2012.
Some of the tunes have ended up on albums by Cloudstreet, Thompson’s musical collaboration with Nicole Murray and Emma Nixon.
The social worth of a blog, though, is when an oppressed human being writes a real time account of what atrocity or infringement of human rights is happening in their third-world village, right now.
There are millions of blogs circulating on the worldwide web, many of which are concerned with marketing, selling, promoting and luring readers into subscribing to the bloggers’ products and/or clicking on sponsors’ links. It is nigh-on impossible to find a list of blogs independently assessed on quality, although some have tried.
The Australian Writers Centre held a competition in 2014 to find Australia’s best blogs, dividing entries into genres like Personal & Parenting, Lifestyle/Hobby, Food, Travel, Business, Commentary and Words/Writing. The competition attracted hundreds of entries which were whittled down to 31 finalists.

The AWC told FOMM it has since switched its focus to fiction competitions but has not dismissed the popularity of blogging. Even so, continuity is an ever-present issue.
The 2014 winner, Christina Sung, combined travel and cooking, two topics which spawn thousands of blogs worldwide, into The Hungry Australian. But as happens with blogs, the author has somewhat moved on since then. As Christina last posted in September 2016: ‘Hello, dear readers! Apologies for my lengthy absence but I’ve been working on a few writing projects lately’.
Likewise, the author of The Kooriwoman, the Commentary winner for a blog about life as an urban Aboriginal in Australia, has not posted since January 2016.
It is not uncommon for finely-written blogs like those mentioned to have a hiatus or disappear without notice, for a myriad of reasons linked to other demands and distractions in the authors’ lives.
The few lists of Australian blogs you can find tend to rank them on popularity (numbers of followers or clickers). The top 10 blogs in this list are all about food or travel.
http://www.blogmetrics.org/australia
Hands-down winner Not Quite Nigella is a daily blog curated by Lorraine Elliott who according to blogmetrics has 28,523 monthly visitors. It’s not hard to see why – the blog is constantly updated with recipes, restaurant reviews, travel adventures and the like, featuring mouth-watering photos and a chatty prose style.
So there are those like Lorraine who make a living from blogging and those who start with a skyrocket burst of enthusiasm and fall to ground like the burnt-out stick.
Whatever your absorbing passion in life happens to be – cross-dressing, wood-carving, wine-making, writing haikus, collecting Toby jugs, quilt-making, proofreading or growing (medicinal) marijuana, you can bet someone out there has created a blog.
Just yesterday for no reason other than a bit of light relief after months of heatwave conditions, I searched for ‘grumpy spouse blog’ and got 22 hits. Have a look at this one – it’s choice.

How many bloggers to change a lightbulb?

blog-bloggers-blogging
Image by Tanja-Denise Schantz www.pixabay.com

The question should be – is FOMM a blog, a topical weekly essay, Citizen journalism or the random musings of a flawed human being who craves attention?

When posting it on the WordPress website, I am reminded that FOMM is not a conventional blog. It’s those endless reminders from the SEO plug-in. For those who have no idea what that means, Search Engine Optimisation is the key to more hits and making it further up the tree of Google rankings. SEO is a nag machine – you already used this keyword – don’t do that. Almost every week it gives my screed a low score for readability. You reckon?

If you are engaged to write short, entertaining blog posts for a company, SEO is essential. If you are being asked to post 10 to 20 times a week you need SEO to penetrate the on-line miasma of ‘Content’.

The way I was brought up, content meant happy with your lot in life. What it means in blog marketing terms is to write entertainingly and splatter keywords throughout your Content. The more times you say ‘widget’ when writing about a widget the higher you will be ranked by Google’s search engines. It’s an insane marketplace.

There are 600 million blogs and 1.7 billion websites out there. They write about anything from Taiwan’s right to independence from China to why the bristles always fall out of shaving brushes. This is not counting the untold numbers of communiques from people who bypass the whole process and just send an email to a list of readers.

Joy, an environmental activist, starting emailing friends about five years ago when the Adani coal project and climate change deniers were unfortunate bedfellows. Joy tells me her missives are sometimes known by readers as ‘Joy’s blog’.

Joe Dolce, who wrote the novelty song ‘Shaddup Your Face’, wrote a weekly letter for years. I know this because a friend shared one of his long, eccentric emails with me and I subscribed.

Famous songwriter Eric Bogle writes a kind of a blog which he simply puts out there on his Facebook page. Sometimes they are, as he’ll say, grumpy old man rants. Other times, Bogle writes with great sensitivity and hits a nerve the way his best songs do.

This is the goal of bloggers – to grab the reader’s attention and hold it to the last word, Alluring headlines have their role to play and I must confess this is not my strong point as a writer. My strength (if indeed I have one) is that I post every Friday, no matter what else is going on in our lives (even on holidays, says ED, somewhat testily).

Daffodil-loving Ange is what I’d call a sporadic blog writer – the best of hers are when she and hubby hit the road and share the trials and travails and lovely images of their travel. I think they are still missing luggage from a trip to the Red Heart (but the daffies are out). My favourite Ange quote comes from a late 2021 Australian road trip.

“I’m so excited about travelling again I even ironed my Lorna Jane cargo pants.”

Australia’s oldest regular blogger Everald Compton, 90+, posts most weeks. Everald’s election-eve analysis of the state of politics and forecasts of things to come was almost 100% on the money and worth re-reading.

Everald, whose CV includes professional fundraiser, inland rail promoter and National Seniors chief executive, has a few favourite causes. In his latest blog he (again) calls for the inclusion of our indigenous people in Australia’s constitution.

Let’s be clear when distinguishing blogs and bloggers from writers who share their opinions about politics, sport, culture, indigenous affairs, climate change, the environment et al.

A blogger in the commercial sense of the word writes interesting (short) articles for companies that are trying to grow their on-line businesses. Let’s say you have a micro-business that makes useful but not indispensable tools. You’ve invented the perfect toenail cutter and employ a blogger to write enticing copy.

“The Toejam fits snugly into the palm, its laser-guided cutting blades fitting beneath the curviest toenail. Its in-built sensors sound an alarm if you are about to engage with flesh. The Toejam comes with a tiny vacuum attachment so you don’t leave toenail parings all over the bedroom floor. The wife really likes it!”

The deputy director of On-line Engagement (OE) fires back a terse email to the contract blogger.

“You only mention Toejam twice – for text of this length you should use the brand keyword at least six times. Also, the brief asked for 150 words so you are 95 words short. Try again and please, what does your wife have to do with anything?”

You can find on-line copy of this ilk designed to sell everything from green tea to rocket launchers. Yeh nah, FOMM is not a blog of that ilk.

Oberlo’s research reveals that micro blogging platform Tumbler is the king of Content, home to 488 million blogs. Its closest competitor, WordPress, hosts 78 million new posts on its platform every month. Four or sometimes five of these are mine.

Nine out of ten Content generators use blogs to sell stuff. Businesses with a blog receive 55% more visitors to their website than those that don’t. They also produce 67% more leads every month.

I decided back in 2014 if I was going to write a newspaper-style opinion column I’d need to write at least 800 words and settled on 1200. The on-line wisdom at the time was that short and fluffy works.

One of my early unsubscribers informed me: “Sorry, Bob. It’s TMTR.” I had to Google that and found it was slang for Too Much To Read.

For those who wish to write blogs that aren’t merely advertising avenues, experts like Databox now recommend writing blog posts of between 1,500 and 2000 words, as the average blog post length has increased over the past seven years from 800 to 1,200 words.

It’s hard to find an objective list of top blogs and when you do, many are mainstream media blogs, ranked by audience size rather than by content.

There are a few independent blogs in this Top 50 list from Feedly that cross over into my own list of recommended blogs (Pearls & Irritations, The Conversation, John Quiggan, Michael West).

The best blogs start as a simple on-line diary, usually generated when the writer is visiting new places. There are many great travel blogs including Nomadic Matt, The Blonde Abroad, Salt in our Hair, Little Aussie Travellers and Ange’s Around the World in 99 Days.

Last time I wrote about blogs and bloggers I mentioned the famous Swedish centenarian Dagny Carlsson, who recently died at the age of 109. She started blogging age 100 under the name Bojan after becoming “bored with retirement”. Her posts were short, to the point and often cheeky. At 106 she advised people to “stop whining and get a grip”. Dagny’s last blog post was on January 28 when she wrote: “like a cat, I have at least nine lives, but I do not know what I should use so much of life for.”

Frivolity aside, if you live in a country with a repressive regime, writing a blog is one (dangerous) way of keeping the world informed. I discovered (in 2017) the word blog in Farsi looks like this – وبلاگ. Iranians who didn’t like the way things were going in their country started وبلاگ’ing (blogging) like crazy after the 2000 crackdown on Iranian media. Although they are taking risks, rebel bloggers living in autocratic countries know their story will be picked up by libertarian journalists in democratic countries.

It’s the Internet, eh.

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