On the 11th day of Christmas my webmaster rubbed on me – 11 “Happy Birthday Jesus” tattoos!

Just when you thought I’ve already cited and objectifried the worst in Kristshun Kitsch, the crass world of commercialization, like a good rash, provides the gifts that keep giving.

In this case it’s we’re talking “Happy Birthday Jesus” Tattoos. Yes folks, everyone knows your kids will love wearing these faith-based tattoos! Easy to apply and remove, they’re fun to find in Sunday School goody bags and Christmas stockings. So what if you send your children a mixed message later in the year when teaching Leviticus 19:28?

Which brings us to today’s object lesson, 11 blogging mistakes pastors & laypersons should avoid.

Yes, like the overzealous but ignorant Sunday school teacher who means well  rewarding their students with rub-on body markings, so too is sometimes true when an equally well meaning pastor takes over a church blog.

The result is a series of errors that plague most new to blogging, including the following:

1. Getting hung up on high-tech instead of compelling content;
2. Assuming Google will do all of your site’s ‘networking’ and ‘advertising’ for you;
3. Shoot-off-mouth first, ask questions later;
4. Shotgun topics – too many points (pellets) in one post;
5. Anemic headlines that have no zing;
6. Ignored or devalued commenters and their input;
7. Shotgun categories – not taking control of your niche of expertise;
8. Assumed it would be easy;
9. An ugly URL that is hard to remember (lest spell)
10. Know-it-all-itis
11. poorly constructed excerpts and/or lead paragraphs.

Three things I keep repeating here, and will continue to repeat:

• People don’t read the web, they scan it;
• Aggregators and search engines index and list titles and excerpts (or lead paragraphs where excerpts aren’t present) – write to that;
• We cannot serve two (or more) masters – write to a single topic, if you have more, post more tomorrow.

Bottom line, just it is our job to leave a mark on the World, not to be marked by worldlinesses – so too it’s our job to leave our mark online with our writing, rather than merely splatter senseless, non compelling markup just so you’re different like everyone else.