Ten Christian Blogs: The Decablog

Adrian Warnock has led the creation of a coalition of Ten Christian Blogs whose writers are dedicated to promoting and highlighting quality Christian work in the blogosphere. These ten are among the highest-ranking blogs in the TTLB Ecosystem that are written by Evangelical Christians. They have agreed to help promote smaller Christian blogs through links and mentions on the their sites. I am honored to be included in the ten, and humbled, as I still feel like a newbie myself; but I am very much on board with the idea that promoting Christian thought in the "Marketplace of Ideas," is Kingdom work.

The aggregator site for the "Decablog," (love that), can be found here. The participating ten blogs are, in alphabetical order:
Adrian Warnock
Evangelical Outpost
In the Agora
Jollyblogger
La Shawn Barber
Le Sabot Post-Moderne
Parableman
Patriot Paradox
Smart Christian
Wittenberg Gate 

The rest of this post is going to be advice to bloggers on how to interact with the Decablog and how to promote your site, so if you are not a blog writer or thinking of becoming one, you may not want to click through and read on. But for the rest of you...

Advice on Interacting with the Decablog

Get to know the Ten Blogs: When you write one of those sterling pieces that just sing with rhetorical bliss, you will want to provide the link to a member of the Decablog. But which one? Just as you would not submit a magazine article on auto repair to Parents Magazine, you should not send your insights on the personalities in Washington politics to Wittenberg Gate. Send those to La Shawn Barber! Sometimes the differences are more subtle. But the only way you will know which of the the ten might be able to make use of your piece is if you do your homework and get to know the writers. Each site has its own style, content, audience and personality.

Send only your best: Restrict your offerings to those pieces that meet the quality standards of the blog to which you are sending them. Send the pieces that define you and will make people want to add you to their regular reading list. Send the pieces that show original thought or insight or that are particularly well-written. You are not merely looking for a quantity of links. You are looking for quality links--links to your best stuff--the writing that will make the best possible first impression to potential new readers, and cause them to link to you on their sites.

Advice on Promoting Your Blog

I feel a bit audacious writing this section, as I have only been writing a blog since mid-November. But I have learned a thing or two along the way, and think I can humbly offer this advice. So as you read this, take it with a grain of salt, as it is coming from a newbie.

Quality content: Many a wise mother has said,"If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." For blogging I would modify it to say, "If you can't write anything worthy, don't write anything at all." I try to get something new up on my site at least once a day. However, there are some days when I just don't have the time, or I don't have anything insightful to say. In those cases, I believe it is better to say nothing, and keep quality content at the top of my page for a good first impression.

I keep a notebook that I use to scribble down ideas for posts. Sometimes I use it to outline a piece before I sit down to write it. When I find myself without a good subject for a post, I flip through the notebook and often find some inspiration there. I will also go through things I have written for other purposes, such as a conference talk, a Sunday School lesson, or a magazine article, and try to find a subject there. These are often my best posts and yet easiest to write, because they are based on ideas that I have already well thought out.

Join appropriate aggregators and alliances: There are many aggregators and alliances of blogs that cross-promote sites with similar interests. Christian bloggers might consider the Blogdom of God, Evangelical Aggregator, Pro-Life Blogs, etc. Joining groups such as these will get your posts listed on aggregator pages visited by like-minded readers, who will have an opportunity to learn of your site or to be reminded of your site.

Join the conversation: Link to other sites, leave comments at other sites, and reflect the "conversation," in the blogosphere on your site. Be sure, though, that when you do so you are not just echoing what others have said. Add your own ideas. Take a thought in another direction.

Make sure your site is equipped for the conversation: Your site should have a good comment system, TrackBack capabilities, and a syndication feed (for use by aggregators). Commenters should be able to link to their own sites through your comment system. Bloggers linking to your site should be able to send a TrackBack ping that will notify your site of the link. Blogger, in particular, has a comment section that is clumsy and lacks some of these capabilities. However, Blogger users can add a system such as HaloScan to their sites for a smoother comment capability and TrackBack.

I started out on Blogger. They are great, they're free; but since I am an HTML idiot, I found myself happier with the user-friendly system at TypePad. Know your limitations and pay for help if you need it. (For me, the small monthly cost of my TypePad account is paid for by the advertising links I carry.)

When you get comments to your site, it is not necessary to answer every one of them. But if you can add something and keep the conversation going, by all means, do so. And for heaven's sake, when you must disagree with them, do so as pleasantly and respectfully as possible. Commenters who are "zinged" on your site may never be back again. Build a community with your readers.

Contribute to Carnivals: There are several "Carnivals" that gather the best writing for the week from sites with similar interests. There is a Christian Carnival, a Recipe Carnival, an Apologetics Carnival, just about any carnival you can think of. By regularly contributing work to these carnivals, you expose your writing to potential new readers. On the left sidebar of this site there is a Google search box. Search for blog and carnival, and you will find them! If thee isn't a carnival for your niche, create one!

Find your voice:  Every blog writer has his or her own personality, and your readers want to connect with it. They want to feel like they know you. On the one hand, you do not want a blog that is all about you, but you do want your personal side to come through. Personal stories are appropriate when they touch on something we can all identify with, or when they illustrate a larger principle, or even when they make us laugh or cry. But don't overdo it. And by all means, don't spend pages describing your cold symptoms or what you had for breakfast. Give us something from your life that we can apply to ours.

On Linking and Thinking: Some blogs are linkers. They have a gift for finding those gems on the World Wide Web and pulling them together for you on their site. Other blogs are thinkers. They produce essays and stories of mostly original content. I read both types of blogs quite a bit, and I have come to the conclusion that both styles are best done when a bit of the other is included.

As an example, check out La Shawn Barber's Corner. La Shawn is a thinker. Her pages are full of well-written, original content. Yet, she relates her writing to that of others by including relevant links within her posts, and appended to the end of them. (I need to do more of this kind of linking myself, so look for more of it on Wittenberg Gate in the future.)

On the other hand, the best linker sites include original content with their links, even if it is just a line or two to put the links into perspective. For a good example, check out Hugh Hewitt, who comments heavily on his many links. (After all, Hugh wrote the book on blogging!)

So, whether you consider yourself a thinker or a linker, strive to add at least a little of each to your site.

Blog rolls: You should keep a list of blogs you read on your site, so others can link to them. It is also good policy to let the other bloggers know you have added them to your site, as it may inspire them to visit you and/or link to your site. At any rate, most bloggers use some means, such as SiteMeter, to watch the traffic to their sites, and when they see traffic arriving from your site, they may visit you to see how they were linked.

Some blog sites have a reciprocal roll to list any site that links to them, even if they don't read it regularly. (I plan on starting one of those, by the way, so if you link to me, be sure I know it.) There are also blog rolls you can add to your site for the various aggregators, such as the Ten Christian Blogs, or the Blogdom of God. You can go to their main sites for the necessary code.

Blog rolls need to be kept up to date. Check the links and see that they are working. I know there are several blogs that I read that are not on my list, so you'll see more added in the next few days. When I read my regular blogs, I am in the habit of going to my site and then going down the list of links as I read. This enables me to catch any bad links, and also lets those writers know they are getting some traffic from my site.

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Again, I'm a new kid on the block, but I have found these things helpful in getting my site quickly established in its little niche in the blogosphere. I hope that Adrian's Ten Christian Blogs project will be of help to other Christian blog writers who are establishing themselves as well.

Comments

[Anna]

I think that is so cool how you put it- thinkers and linkers.
Cool and catchy:)
Anna:)