It's LiveJournal's dirty little secret, the elephant in the room. Every single LiveJournaller thinks about it every time they post - but we hardly ever talk about it, because to do so might break the fragile spell that holds us all bound together.

You know what I'm talking about. We all want it. But nobody admits it.

We want to be an LJ Star.

Oh, maybe you don't want a billion people friending you, but almost everyone wants the bennies of throwing something onto the net and knowing that a hundred people read what you had to say. It's a small audience, sure - but does that guy at McDonald's have a small crowd waiting to hear what he says next? Does the guy at the Oil Lube station get fan mail from people saying, "Wow, I never thought of that?"

No. That's why LiveJournal rules. It's your little mini-celebrity shot, your fifteen minutes of pseudo-fame. And the more people you have witnessing your escapades, the better.

As someone who's ascended the ranks, I don't think what I've done is very special... But I know a lot of people who have expressed envy about where I've gotten to. "How did you get so many friends?" they ask.

You want friends? It ain't hard. Let me show you how to build your LJ audience, step-by-step.

Step #1: Write In English, Goddammit.
You don't have to be a grammar nazi like myself, but writing in l33tsp3@k AOL chatroom parlance is going to alienate everyone over the age of 15. Use full sentences, don't abbreviate or abuse the LOL LOL LOL or the ellipsis (...), and do try to stuff more than a single sentence into a paragraph.

Despite rumors, English is not dead. Many people prefer writing they can actually, y'know, read. Thus, giving them a nice sentence structure will ensure that they come back for more.

Step #2: Write As If Your Audience Didn't Know You.
I've been blogging for two years now, but you may note that I still refer to Gini as "my lovely wife Gini." There is a reason for that; I am providing context to my entries so people who are new here will understand what is going on.

If someone doesn't know you, an entry like this:

"Jimmy and Betty and me went out to drink. She went batshit as usual and we went home and then Jimmy got mad."

Means nothing. An entry like this:

"Jimmy and Betty and me went out to drink. Jimmy started flirting with the barmaids like he always does, and since Betty's still in love with him that made her go batshit, as usual. She started screaming and threatening to throw glasses around the bar, and we went home. Then Jimmy got all pissed at me because he thought I was sleeping with her, which is ridiculous."

One entry is significantly longer, yes - but it also invites people into your life. The first is a two-sentence chronicle that might or might not mean something to you seven years from now; the second tells a story.

You want to tell stories. And to tell stories, you must continually reacquaint people with the cast of characters and the locales. As such, write as if you were talking to a bunch of strangers who don't know you, as opposed to the three friends who currently do.

Step #3: Make Your Journal Readable.
If you're setting out to bring your writings to the masses, then maybe you should make it easy for the masses to read your words. Think of it as sprucing up your apartment before inviting guests over.

I have written before about the evils of white text on a black background. Studies have shown that dark text on a light background is the most universally readable (yes, even on a CRT screen). If you go with a big black page with little dots of white on it, it may look cool, but it takes an effort to read. If it takes an effort to read your page, you are streamlining your audience.

So make it dark text on a light background, with a lot of contrast. It doesn't matter how cool your journal looks, anyway; once you get on someone's friends list, they'll never see it, so don't stress about making it all Goth to reflect your lifestyle.

Also, "serif" - fonts with little curlicues on the end - are a lot easier to read than "sans serif" fonts, like Helvetica. (EDIT: Courier, which I mentioned earlier, is a monospace font, not a sans serif. My bad.) There is one LiveJournal style (after some brief research, I can't find the name of it) that is an abomination unto the lord - not only is everything in annoying little boxes, it uses a hard computer font where everything's at right angles and is very hard to read.

I myself have never gotten more than three entries into a page with that font, with light lettering on a black background. Yes, things might have looked different had I added those people to my friends' list, but if I never read what they had to say I didn't feel the urge to add them.

Step #4: No Quizzes.
Let's get something straight here: Nobody fucking cares about your quiz results. They care about their quiz results. Oh, they'll be happy to take the test themself to pass the time, and may say, "Hey, glad for passing it on!" - but really, they'll never remember that you were a Hopping Megatoad.

They'll remember they were the Agile Treefelcher. You will be forgotten.

As such, take all the quizzes you want, but don't post them unless they're really funny. If your only content is quizzes, nobody will listen to you.

Although interestingly enough, if all you post is newslinks, you will eventually get an audience if the links are interesting enough. You can become your own customized RSS feed if you work at it. But for most people, the only way to Big Friends Lists is writing.

So spend some time writing.

And speaking of that....

Step #5: Write Regularly.
Maybe not every day - or three or four times a day, like me - but write often enough so that people have a reason to tune you in. Two or three times a week should do it.

As to what you should write, the ideal entry seems to be about one to two screens long. Any shorter and you'll risk seeming callow; any longer, and you've got to be a really good writer to carry it off. (Present company not excepted: I know damn well a lot of people are going to skim this entry because it's long.)

When you write, write essays. Talk about what you're feeling - but stay positive. (Nobody friends Eeyore. They have enough problems of their own without listening to someone else's suicide solution, thankyouverymuch.) Don't shy away from the political rant. If you have a nice moment or an interesting thought, catalogue it.

If you write every three months, you may be fascinating, but people won't friend you. Why bother, when they can just drop by every so often?

(Incidentally, I write first thing in the morning before work. I allow myself an hour to fuck around. Then I do the stuff that pays my bills.)

In my next entry on this, I'll discuss in far more detail what sorts of entries work to create a community: The Art of Getting Comments is a tricky business, and still an evolving science, but I'll take a first stab at it.

Step #6: Comment Whore Yourself Shamelessly.
The best method to get people over to your journal is to involve yourself in theirs. Read as many journals as you can, and leave interesting comments. Not meaningless comments like "hehehe that was great" or "I agree. God, you're wonderful," but thoughtful dissections of their core arguments and genuinely funny things. The better you are in comments, the more likely they are to think of you as an intriguing person.

Follow links from the people you don't know and read their Friends list. Comment on their entries. The more you can become a part of someone's cast of characters (as in, the people who they expect to comment on their entries), the more people you'll accumulate.

And whore, baby, whore. If you write a knock-down stellar entry and you know that Shadesong likes it, then ask her to pimp it. If you're dating someone with more friends, use that connection as advertising. The more people you have mentioning you, the better.

Yes, this is utterly pathetic. But on the other hand, a lot of people do it without admitting this is why they do it. I'm just saying how it works, is all.

Step #7: Add Everyone Back.
There is a weird vibe in the LJ community where if someone adds you to their friends list, you have three days to add them back or they remove you.

Now me, I don't get this. If you like someone enough to want to read them on a daily basis, why does it matter whether they read you? There are at least five people on my friends list who don't read me, and I don't care. I like what they produce. End of story.

But still, this phenomenon cannot be ignored. To truly snowball the friends-of, you must add everyone who adds you. If reading your friends list becomes overwhelming, do what everyone else does and create a separate "core friends" filter that serves as your true friends list. That way, you can ignore the people who you wouldn't want to read anyway without alienating them by not adding them back.

Step #8: Track Your Friends.
I almost forgot this step. How do you know who's friended you so that you can add them back?

Why, by the handy-dandy Joule chart, of course!

Step #9: Create A Meme.
Why do I have so many goddamn friends-of? It's not that I'm a good writer. It's because about 500,000 people have taken my various quizzes, and stopped by afterwards to see what I was like.

Without that publicity, my friends-of list would be maybe a third of what it is now. I'm popular because my quizzes are popular.

As such, it's in your best interests to try to create a meme that bears your name. It doesn't have to be a computer-generated one, but creating some little silly thing like The Top 100 Movies Meme, the Three Bullets meme, or even the "Marriage is Love" meme will help to spread the word across LJ.

You can also create "mini-memes" by writing particularly eloquent pieces that express a sentiment that other people share. When other people start linking to you ("Did you read Gini's essay on playing fair?"), then you have people's eyeballs.

After I write a really good piece, I get twenty or thirty people adding me at once. That's because it gets quoted. You can, too.

Now. I think that's it. Did I miss anything? Let me know. My hour's up, so I gotta run.

Tomorrow, I'll be discussing The Art of Getting Comments, and what sorts of entries lead to a greater audience for any given LiveJournaller.

(P.S. - If you're here, why not check my new Webcomic, Home On The Strange, a comic about two nerdy homeowners shepherding a bunch of single friends through life? Hey, thanks for visiting!)

Current Mood: geeky

(Tell me I'm full of it)