Yesterday I blogged about Sloth, a deadly sin of blogging. To redress the balance today I thought I would investigate the positive, the virtues of a good blogger. We all want to be good bloggers right?
Apparently the traditional seven virtues are Chastity, Liberality, Abstinence, Diligence, Patience, Kindness and Humility . Looking at Wikipedia (and possibly armed with a dictionary), these virtues for living translate really well for the specific business of blogging.
- “Chastity” = (Sidestepping the sexual connotation) Courage and Acheivement through education and self improvement. This is a good start, bloggers need to bravely face public scrutiny and to constantly educate theirselves. If you are not always improving you might well be falling behind.
- “Liberality” = Strength of will, Giving freely, Nobility of thought and deed. I guess strength of will could translate into knowing your own mind and sticking to your opinions. Giving freely? Well we often say link out and link often. Share the love. Nobility of thought and deed should really go without saying.
- “Abstinence” = Restraint, Self-control. Mindfulness of others. When faced with spam and flames it is good to have restraint. Also the way you project your thoughts and opinions can have a significant affect on how you are perceived in the blogosphere.
- “Diligence” = Industriousness, Work Ethic, Zealous. We talked about sloth last time, a good work ethic should prove rewarding.
- “Patience” = Pretty self explainatory, includes Endurance and Moderation. Keep plugging away doing good work and the success should come.
- “Kindness” = Humanity, Charity, Compassion, Friendship, Sympathy. We all need friends but especially bloggers. Networking is a key component of any bloggers strategy. It is far easier to network when people know of you as friendly, and blogger or not it is always good to try as best as you can to be approachable, humane and charitable.
- “Humility” = Modesty, Respectful. In these boastful web2.0 PR spin times I guess some of us could find this tricky, heh.
I wish I could say I embody all these traits all the time but hey, it’s good to have something to work towards, eh?
Thing is, these good habits aren’t just effective for being “a good person”, they are also worthwhile for making your blogging successful. So you wouldn’t just be being “good”, you could also be being “great”.
This is my interpretation, what traits do you think are important for bloggers?
powered by performancing firefox