When it rains in South Florida on vacation, well, you watch movies. My in-laws have On Demand from Comcast and they had Roadhouse as a choice. This week has been one for connections to Roadhouse, with the passing of Jeff Healey and the announcement that Patrick Swayze has Pancreatic Cancer (Rest in Peace Patrick), how could I not watch.

While watching the movie I got to the part where Dalton tells the bouncers and bar staff the new “rules”. And I started to think how those rules could be applied to blogging.

1. – “One, Never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected.”
In blogging for money you have many opponents. There are spam commentors, affiliate marketing ‘gurus’ (do they really help you or fill their coffers) and Big G (been RankSpanked lately). So to survive and excel you must be smarter, faster and better than the competition. You must anticipate rather than follow. Lead rather than catch up. If you don’t do that then you will not make it as a blogger.

2. – “Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
This is a tough one to follow as a blogger. Your blog is your sounding board and it is very easy to fly off the handle and blog about the things that are bothering you. I’ve been guilty of letting spammers get to me and I’ve been guilty of getting upset and posting about it. Not the best thing to do because I played right into the spammers hands. They want attention. So by blogging about it and giving them attention I let them win.

The best advice I have in dealing with spammers is to toss their comments. Don’t even bother reading them. You have a delete button for a reason.

3. – “Three, be nice.”
Being nice should be rule number one but that is okay because your most important message should be the last thing that you leave your audience. If you give out your most important information at the beginning of your post then your audience will leave before they finish reading what you have to say.

Being nice is the most important and that is why I think this blog has had at least some success. Being nice means responding to your audience. I try very hard to respond to each and every comment. I also try and visit each person who visits me. I can’t do it every day but I try and do it often.

Being nice means digging or stumbling blog posts that made a difference to you. Promote people who make a difference in your blogging life. You don’t have to tell them that you did so or ask for anything in return, just do it because it is nice.

Can you think of other ways to be nice in blogging? And we will just throw out that last part of “until it is time not to be nice.”