Blogging Bugbears – 2016 Edition

I’ve written at length about various issues I’ve found in the Blogging Community. Notably the battles between factions akin to Game of Thrones, and the fact that so many people with blogs declare themselves as ‘Social Media Gurus‘ when really, they just have a Twitter and Instagram account. Over the past few months, I’ve brooded over a few aspects of blogging, which, to be frank are really starting to boil my piss. I’ve assembled them below – enjoy!

ENDLESS Competitions and Mindless Reviews.

Competitions are a MASSIVE source of traffic, there are folks out there who pretty much spend all their time entering competitions, and they will flock to wherever an online competition is. It’s a cheap trick of boosting your visitors and following, and I think it’s fair to say many bloggers have run a comp in their times. But there is a growing trend of blogger who having tens of giveaways running at once, meaning their traffic is constantly inflated and they raise higher in stupid blogging charts. Usually these competitions are run with a mindless paragraph review of a product they are giving away –

‘I like this product, it is good – you can win one’

You could probably run a giveaway for the corpse of a family pet and the compers would STILL enter it – I’ve seen them go crazy for a packet of baby wipes and a tube of sweets – you can giveaway ANYTHING. Yes, it’s great to wave massive viewing numbers and a high following to PR folk when you’re trying to work with them, but your once brilliant ‘family’ blog is just a hole full of tat being shifted.

Comments for Backlinks / Comments

You know, I don’t really care if people comment on a post – it’s nice if they do, but, meh – I can take or leave them. Many bloggers take their commenting very seriously, not because they really care about the subject, or because they want to comment, it’s for backlinks to their blog or in return for comments on their blog.

I’ve heard tales of bloggers checking the DA (Domain Authority) of a blog before submitting a comment to it, they don’t want their backlink on a low DA site. If it’s a high DA site then a backlink is helpful to the person leaving the comment’s DA – utterly selfish twatbadgery. Which kinda leads me on to..

Bloggers interviewing Bloggers

Argggh.. You’ve met bloggers right? They can be some of the most dull and inane creatures you’ll ever meet, usually the ones who turn up their noses to free booze at events because you MIGHT just see the boring mask slip. I *love* watching interviews, and learning about people – bloggers interviewing other bloggers though?

No.

It’s the same old questions, with the same old answers, usually bigging up several bloggers higher up the ‘food chain’ so they can link up to them, or hope they respond on Social Media. If you want a sanitised opinion from a blogger, read their blog. Mix it up a bit, get pissed with some bloggers and THEN interview them – for real – that’d be a bit less bland. But again, usually those doing the ‘interviewing’ are just after some backlinks from bloggers with a decent DA, I wonder why?!

Sanitised Soft Focus Families

Jeeeeezy creazy – this is the height of bullshit, endlessly colour tuned perfection of Instaporn, painting the image of this perfect family in a beautifully tweaked living space like they’ve been superimposed into an IKEA catalogue. Why? Be honest, your kids throw food around, they’ll act like little shits, your partner hates you for making them pose like that. Everything is NOT perfect, you don’t have to pretend, we all know. Be real, but don’t take it too far…

Toddler / Baby Shaming

MY TODDLER DOESN’T SLEEP WHEN I WANT IT TO – I’M GOING TO DRINK WINE / GIN – Repeat forever 

Yeah.. We get it, your offspring are massive pains in the arse, the thing is, that’s ALL children, you’re not special, every child will push their parents to the full extent of emotional extremes. Can you make a blogging career out of basically saying the same things about different subjects, wellllll.. a lot of folks do. Being cruel about your children is a bit dickish. Yep, children wake up when you don’t want them to, they’ll lob your dinner on the floor, they’ll smash something expensive. It’s the shit you sign up to when you have a baby, we’re all tired and frustrated – we’re dealing with it, so should you.

Posts that are just lists

Oh.