Blogging For Dummies — Are You The Dummy They Are Referring To?

“Blogging for dummies” hopefully isn’t offensive to new bloggers, at least it gives a clear indication of not needing to be an experienced blogger to read the book. Maybe “Blogging for beginners” would be a better name.

I completely disagree with the previous comments. Bloggers may indeed be intelligent people but that doesn’t mean they know everything about blogging when they’re starting out! And if all serious bloggers want to be web developers then why are most blogging sites pushed as being something that anyone can use?

There are plenty of bloggers who are not coders and who write great blogs. First and foremost, blogging is about WRITING. If you’re a coder that doesn’t mean you qualify as a blogger. If you’re a writer but not a coder, you could use a hosted blogging service, get a friend to help, or learn a bit yourself. Learning how to install blogging software does take time but doesn’t require a lot of development skills.

I would say that if writing does not appeal to you, that should be far more of a reason not to blog than if you don’t know HTML/CSS and so on.

In terms of how to write for new bloggers, I don’t think you have to completely dumb down your posts. But if you’re writing for new bloggers, either in some of your posts or all of them, you need to write in plain English and explain what you’re writing about. For instance if you write about SEO without saying what SEO stands for, or you write about SERPs without saying what they are, new bloggers will have a hard time understanding the post. Explaining jargon is not the same as dumbing down your content.

It would get a bit frustrating to explain the same jargon every time, so what you could do is to write a couple of posts about the basics and then follow them up with some more detailed posts that say something like “read the earlier posts if you don’t know what this means”. I did this at weeklyblogging.com in my four-part Google Analytics guide.

Of course, if you’re writing for experienced bloggers then that’s another matter. But if you’re trying to appeal to bloggers of all levels, you can’t assume anything about how much people know.
Ben recently posted..Five sentences- Brevity is best

Ive always thought that all those “for Dummies” books were a bit condescending as a title. But it was a marketing ploy that worked to sell the books. Now people just see it as part of that series as opposed to an insult. It’s common connotation is more like it’s a book for the inexperienced.
Richard recently posted..Innovative Blog Spotlight- The Blog Tyrant

To be honest, the “blogging for dummies” crowd rarely gives anything useful away for free. Most of the stuff out there is just a “buy my (whatever they’re selling) for my secrets” scam. Yes blogging can be technically and it can be complex, but it can and is, most often, simple and easy. There are no “magic bullets” or “secret recipes” for a successful blogger as success is determined by each individual blogger. For me, just getting a visitor is a success. When they leave a comment, its a “miracle” but that’s the style of my blog as I’m often contentious.
Mar Matthias Darin recently posted..The depravity of National Public Radio