Thou Shalt Not Suck

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Rae says I have to introduce myself since I’m boring and none of you will know who I am. I’m Lisa Barone, Senior Writer at Bruce Clay and the adorable and loveable voice over at the Bruce Clay blog. I’m the chick mauled by Rae here and the girl the T-shirt whore went to work for. There. Now we’re acquainted…

[waves]

There are rules in blogging, blogging commandments if you will. You have to know thy audience, you shalt not sound like a pretentious jackass, and lastly, under no circumstances, shall you psych yourself out so badly that you can’t write a damn thing for two weeks and have panic attacks over what you’re going to do when your guest entry sucks and Rae comes at your eyes with spoons.

(Don’t judge me.)

You see, would have been friends, when trying to come up with a suitable topic to fulfill my Rae whoring duties, I choked. I downgraded from upcoming blogging rock star to, as Rae likes to call me, a whiny little bitch

I didn’t think I’d have such a difficult time. I blog everyday over at Bruce Clay where I have to hide my inner bitch as to not become a blogging liability. Instead of saying that I think a certain blogger is a complete and total jackass, I say that I respectfully do not agree with his point of view. I know how to write for Bruce. However, this time I was writing for Rae. And as anyone will tell you, Rae is far scarier than Bruce. Rae will crush you so bad no one will be able to identify your remains. Rae watches The Sopranos. Rae is from New Jersey.

I had tons and tons of ideas but no ability to execute them due to the level of suckiness that I had curiously adopted. While trying to summon my inner-Rae and do things the way she would — blogging half-naked, fully-drunk and using words that make Rand Fishkin blush — I penned the following entries:

• 12 Things You Don’t Know About Rae Hoffman (I would have been so totally killed.)
• Clients Who Suck
• My SEO Parents (Michael Gray and Rae Hoffman)
• People That Need To Die
• The Comma Idiot
• How Blogging Ruined My Life
• Why Michael Gray is Way Cooler Than Rand Fishkin (Fine, I never started this one but it was suggested to me… by Michael.)

They all sucked. I couldn’t use any of them. They didn’t suck because I am not adorable, personable, and hilarious – I am. They sucked because I was trying too hard. I was forcing the posts so that you’d like me and Rae wouldn’t try and gouge my eyes out spoons. But by doing that, I became a dumb, useless girl.It re-taught me a good lesson: If you want to be a successful blogger, you have to be yourself. Try to force it and you’re left looking like an idiot.

The best piece of blogging advice anyone can give you is to be true to who you are. It’s cliché, but it’s true. You establish an audience when your readers establish a connection with you. Not when you try and convince them that you’re the cool kid in school. It didn’t work in high school and it’s not going to work now. I needed to just accept that I am not a cool kid of SEO. This must be why Rae abandons me in hotel lobbies.

There are thousands of search marketing blogs out there. Eager SEOs practically created the medium so they could stuff keywords talk about key issues. However, you don’t read a thousand SEM blogs. Why? Because 90 percent of them downright suck. They’re written by people trying to sound funny/smart/insightful. They’ve found that doing [X] makes people like you so they do [X] multiplied by a hundred. They force personality like black hats stuff keywords into Meta tags.

You wanna blog? Super. Blogging is wicked awesome. But blog as you, not like someone else. Don’t start swearing up a storm because Rae does. Don’t start picking fights because others do. Your only chance of standing out is to be genuine. People can tell pretty easily whether or not you give a shit.

Find a topic that you’re interested in and offer your opinion/insight/all out rant on the subject. Don’t be a little bitch and regurgitate whatever everyone else has said about the topic. Don’t pretend you’re too cool to participate and mock those that do. Don’t not have an opinion because you’re too afraid to rock the boat. Flip the damn boat. Own up to your extreme nerd tendencies. It’s not like people don’t already know you’re a nerd. You’re in SEO. And you blog. Seriously.

I lost track of that lesson the past few weeks and became a raging lunatic. I’m the girl who blogs over at Bruce Clay and talks about puppies, yells at Susan Esparza and shouts “huzzah” a whole hell of a lot (It’s like a tic.) If you don’t like that, you can go elsewhere. Read Search Engine Land. Go hang out at SEOmoz. I don’t freakin’ care. Me and you aren’t made to be BFFs; I’ll live. I’m still prettier than you.

Don’t become an insecure little twit when blogging. Don’t psych yourself out and suck. Be who you are and write what you care about the way you want to write it. Screw everyone else. If you’re pretending you may as well not even blog. It just makes you look like an idiot.

Consider this your “aw” moment for the week. Have no fear; I’m sure there will be lots of swearing, drinking and debauchery in the days to come from the cooler guest bloggers — which is just how Rae would have it. You wait for them, I’m going to cover my eyes in anticipation for Rae’s spoons of fury. I’m totally screwed.

This was a guest post by: Lisa Barone

Lisa Barone is the Senior Writer at Bruce Clay and the adorable voice over at the Bruce Clay blog. Known as "The Lisa", she was never left alone in a lobby at NY SES a few years ago.