Shotgun Blogging and the Blue Shotgun
I’m sure that the vast majority of my blog readers have no idea what “shotgun blogging” is, so let me briefly explain.
Depending upon who you talk to, it can mean a variety of things, but here’s a my list of blogs & blog posts that I’ll thrown in that category…
- Link posts. This can be something like “Check out so-and-so’s post/article about XYZ.” Or something with a pulled quote, a link and very quick commentary (i.e. just about any Utter Oddness post.). And also link “dailies”.
- Tidbit posts / blog grenades. This can be just a brief mention of something but offers little to no elaboration. While this is great to get the creative juices flowing, it does tend to irritate people who come looking for “meat”.
- Random posts. This can be random in the sense of the blog audience or random in the sense of the content within the actual post. It just seems out of place from the normal posts.
- Thoughtless posts. These posts are often the result of a person just sitting down at their keyboard and hacking away until something shows up on the screen and some smelly digital diarrhea is left behind for all to “enjoy”. (I apologize now for the imagery that statement may cause…but you get my point, right?)
Now there are other criteria you could use, but that list covers most “shotgun posts” you may stumble across in the blogosphere. And I must assert that if a blog is touted as a personal journal, this doesn’t matter quite as much as it does for blogs who have an intended audience besides people just interested in you. (I’m sure that people will argue some of my list…but it is my personal list, so take that with a grain of salt.)
Of the bunch, the only one that truly irks me are thoughtless posts. I can usually pick up a copy of the local newspaper if I want to read that sort of thing. Luckily I don’t run into that very often.
Blog grenades intrigue me a bit and random posts can be interesting from time-to-time. And I absolutely love link posts as they save me time by finding the content for me.
So, with that overview, I’d like to introduce you to my new sideblog/asides/mini-blog, Blue Shotgun.
There are often times that I really want to post links, tidbits, random thoughts, announcements, etc., but within the context of my personal blog, or any of my other blogs (even the ones which are technically shotgun blogs), it normally doesn’t seem appropriate, so I refrain (with a few exceptions here and there).
This is where Blue Shotgun comes into play.
While Blue Shotgun is going to serve as my sideblog/blog companion for Musings, I have opted to make this a fully functional standalone blog because normal sideblog setups are very limiting in what you AND your readers can do. With it setup this way, you, the reader, can:
- Search the sideblog.
- Comment on the sideblog entries.
- Subscribe to RSS feeds.
- See the recent entries via all Surge Bucket Media blogs. (If you didn’t catch it, or only read the RSS and haven’t visited any of the sites recently, there is now a recent SBM posts section at the bottom of all blogs.)
Content wise, I’m aiming for “anything goes” topic wise (within reason and decency of course), so I’m not sure what all will show up over there. And be prepared for the postings to come in fast spurts. While there may be days between postings at times, when I do pop in to post, they will often appear in quantity since these should all be pretty short.
Off the bat, I can tell you that general podcast announcements (i.e. “Trolley Dodgers #XX is now available”), ad scans, links and quips will be showing up. So if you want to keep seeing those updates, either bookmark Blue Shotgun or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Enjoy. (Or ignore.) Your choice.
