Blogging About Music 101

At one random morning in your life, you will wake up and suddenly decide that you will become a blogger. The following is a quick tutorial on how to blog, in this case, about music.

When you first start need to come up with a theme and the objective of your music blog. This is simply done by stating in the first few posts what you will be writing about in your personal blog. You may want to be a critic of music or simply writing about the feelings you come across when you listen to certain music. However, the purpose has to be along the lines of providing the information and your personal knowledge about a certain genre to your readers. You have to become an authority in your genre of music. Someone who writes with knowledge that limited few knows is more noticeable than someone who copy and pastes something from wikipedia. My tip is to just type, type, and type whatever comes to mind… which is my way of expressing my knowledge and opinions in my own voice. As you type, it is also automatic that you apply your own paradigm to writing, because it is your style. However, in my opinion, the most effective way to write is to write some now, set it aside, and return to it later to write some more. That way, you give time for your brain to process some information and actually help the overall structure of your post. Everything tends to be more fluid when you do not write everything in one breathe.

When you experience writer’s block, do not panic. Simply go to other fellow bloggers and read up on their news and information. This is a guarantee that your brain starts to turn and you get hit with a sudden inspiration. If the inspiration comes from a fellow blogger’s post and you feel the need to include a certain statement, be sure to quote the person and link back to his or her site. In the world of blogging, you have to respect the work of other bloggers and linking back and forth also allows you to create affliates which at times attract people to surf into your blog. Most bloggers have a stat counter and can figure out when visitors are coming from. When they notice visitors flooding in from your blog, they will link back to you. When reading others fails, simply pick out something from your favorites and write about the song in detail. When other blogs provide no inspiration and your favorite play list is out of tracks… do not admit to be a bad blogger. Open yourself up and look for other artists of the same genre that you have never heard of. Surprisingly, you will almost always find a new favorite and instantly become a fan.

A fan of a certain artist is certainly a great way of connecting with your readers. I mean if you bad mouth Fergie and some random fan that scans the internet for posts that talk bad about Fergie, then prepare for some put downs. As humans, we have opinions, and opinions like to associate with opinions that are similar to their own. For example, Britney Spears. When she was the “in” thing, she had a trillion fans all over the world, but when she was “out”, her fans nearly became extinct. Why? Because the rest of the world is not her fan anymore. Therefore… association and sweet talking about a certain artist is one way of connecting with your audience and catching their attention. Other ways include: extreme negativity about a certain artist and making up non-logical facts about an artist, but beware that these two methods tend to attract tons of negativity also.

To be a good music blogger, your posts must be colorful. By that, I man that your vocabulary must not be limited to: good, bad, excellent, thumbs up, terrible, and etc. They created the thesaurus for a simple reason. This is a secret, but it is actually for us music bloggers to cheat and make our posts sound like we really know our music. ;) Not saying that we don’t, but it just makes our lives easier that’s all. In addition, do not just write about music and describe it. Upload or find some already uploaded samples for your audience. I mean… “a” song sings (picture says) “a thousand words”. Connect with you music also. IF one song made you sad during office hours, but another song made your day, then write about it. To me a blog is an online journal that gives you a chance for other to read up on at their own leisure.

General Dos and Don’ts:

1. Write whatever you have in mind
2. Do not care about negative comments, if they keep reading your posts… good!
3. Be as critical as you want, but respect the work of other’s.
4. Do not spend 10 hours blogging a day.
5. Do not go off topic. If you are writing about hip hop, don’t go off on a tangent and write about opera.
6. Use the thesaurus, but do not pick the word that you yourself does not know existed at all before you saw it.
7. If you are a daily blogger, then blog daily, if not just follow your routine. Readers will know when to revisit. It is also a good thing to keep readers on their toes.
8. Make absolute statements. Who cares if someone comes and corrects you and makes fun. Sound like you know your stuff.
9. Read the comments and respond appropriately.
10. Have fun, it is not work, you picked the topic. It should be enjoyable.