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So, because I am kind of a nerd, I went through some of my favorite bloggers and checked out their first post.  I figure, if you want to have a successful blog, learn from the best.

Here is a run down of how some my friend’s first posts:

• Uber-blogger Scot McKnight just jumped right in with a post about praying with the church and he hasn’t looked back since.
• John Chandler went with the “why I named my site the way I did” approach on his first post.  This is a decent approach but you later have to explain your name change.
• Eugene Cho has terrible archives (sorry dude, its true!) so I can’t really tell when his first post was or what it is about.  But, it looks like it might be this one.
• Al Hsu, the Suburban Christian fittingly started off with well, a post about him being a suburban Christian.  Al did do a little bit of the usual “I’ve decided to blog routine” but I’ll let him slide since he’s such a nice guy.
• Alan Hirsch, the Aussie blogger wrote a deep, long, and engaging blog post to kick things off in a big, big way.  Check it out here. Give yourselves some time.  It’s deep.
• Bob Hyatt, who has been blogging since way back in 2004 and wondered if today he’d be thinking “what were we thinking” about his new church plant.  I talked with Bob last week on the phone and I’m pretty sure that while he probably is thinking, “what were we thinking” he’s also thinking it was a great move to plant his church. Well, done Bob and Evergreen!
• You have to go way, way back to early… uh… July 2008 to read Gary Alloway’s first blog post. Man, he’s behind the times! Gary had a riviting post about the five reasons he’s starting a blog. Good luck with #5 Gary.
• Your friend and mine, JR Briggs started his blog on the last day of 2004. Which, apparently was the year documentary.  Little did JR know that was actually the year of the monkey according to the Chinese calendar.

Oh, and I just jumped right in too…

I can do my best to create a site that is visually pleasing, guides the reader and helps promote the website’s cause, agenda or business as best that I can. But, if the copy that is put on the site is poor…the site will be ineffective.

The problem comes when authors just don’t believe me that the only person who will read what they just wrote is them, their employees and their possibly mother.

I came across an article recently from the A List Apart website, a quote there sums it up perfectly:

“Web users are not a captive audience. Don’t treat them like one.”

It’s true. Think about it, when you visit a website, do you read long paragraphs of text with really complicated, smart sounding words in it?

Most organizations love their descriptive, “in house” language. But users, when they visit a site, they just want to know what you do, how you do it and why it matters to them, all in plain English.

They don’t want to have to work for that information because if they have to, they probably won’t.

Here are 6 practices that make me actually want to read your website instead of just look at it:

1. Use headings and subheadings effectively: I have found when I visit a new site, I scan the headings to see which sections I want to read. If I don’t see any headings and its a long page, I often just don’t read.
2. Keep Paragraphs Short: This is probably the most second important to my reading after looking for headings. I have a hard time reading long paragraphs of text on the web. Chances are you can cut out 1/2 the paragraph text and still say the same thing. Chances are when you do that, I will read it.
3. iLove Lists: Seriously, when I am skimming a site I always stop on lists. I’ll bet you read the first paragraph on this post and the bold titles in this list. If they catch your interest, maybe you will read the rest of the post.
4. Use links effectively: This probably is more for blogs. But for some reason when I visit a blog and I see links my eyes go to them first. This is probably because the links are in a different color and highlighted. If i don’t see any interesting links, I generally won’t really read the entry.
5. Write on a 4th 8th Grade level: This is probably more true for business websites and for churches. But, even for blogs this could be helpful. If you want your site to have wide appeal, don’t use big words. I’ve heard this tip from a number of different places.
6. Don’t Be Boring: Just because your writing it short doesn’t mean it has to be boring!

Here’s a rundown of the map…

Twitter feeds my blog with my most recent update in the upper right hand corner.
Twitter sends my most recent update to Facebook’s status line (so I don’t have to visit Facebook to update my status there).
Twitter sends my most recent update to the status line of my three Instant Messager programs.
I connect to my three instant messenger programs at the same time through a program on my Mac called “Adium” which also connects me to Facebook chat (though, i tend to turn that off when I think of it because I have way too many friends on Facebook).
My blog automatically sends notice of my most recent blog post to my twitter status (which, of course, then ends up on my instant messenger accounts and my Facebook line).
I e-mail photos from my iPhone to my Flickr account (photo sharing) and then they show up at the top of my blog.
There, I think that about covers it.

Simple right?

Actually, while it might not be simple to set up and it seems really complicated, its really natural for me.

Of course, the bigger question is “why?” Why do all this? Why share so much? That’s a great question but the main thing is that I have seen over the last few years the beauty and joy that comes from being able to learn from and speak into so many different people that I would never meet otherwise.

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