Anime and Manga Blogging Primer

Anime and Manga blogging is a common hobby for those of us who are interested in sharing our thoughts with the rest of the online community. However, the Net is littered with the debris of good intentions and burned out writers. This article seeks to provide a little advice on how to create a successful and long lasting anime/manga blog.

1) Decide your limits

When writing a blog it is easy to write about too many topics or settle into a very specific niche.Variety keeps a writer going, but too much variety waters down a blog. Blogs, like any other medium, need a specific focus. Yet, that focus needs to be broad enough to give you wiggle room when you get tired of reviewing the latest anime you’ve watched. A blog about figurines may be great, but can you only write about figurines? If you can, go ahead! Most of us need a little more variety. Here at JP we cover anime, Japanese folklore, and some other aspects of Japanese pop culture and fandom. This gives us a wide variety of topics to write about. I, for one, don’t like to write nothing but anime reviews. I have a wider interest in Japanese culture than that! I am a librarian; so I tend to write in ways that try to educate people or interest them in the content I am reviewing. I try to keep you, the reader, in mind.  A writer has to consider their audience. Which is our next point.

2) Consider the Audience

What is the purpose of your blog? Why would people want to read it? What do they want to read? There is a point where your interests and those of your readers overlap. Finding that point is where they overlap is the best place for you to write. You will see people visit and visits will encourage you to write more. Also, how you write needs to consider the audience. JP focuses on teens and young adults; we try to keep our content appropriate to these age groups. Sometimes we will discuss content that is a little toward the adult side like yaoi, yuri, horror films, and similar content. But, we will write it in such a way to keep it fairly tame. We tend to use academic journals for our editorial research, but we will not write like those stuffy journal writers. We will pepper our posts with some large words and Japanese time to time. Our main goals is to educate in an entertaining way, after all!

A blogger also has to consider the audience’s comments. People will disagree with you and even get angry. It doesn’t reflect well on you if readers see you enter a flame war with a commenter.  A blogger needs to have a thick skin and stay objective. We are human; we are wrong sometimes. Admit it when it is true. Hold your ground (nicely!) when it is not.

Readers like regular post schedules. It can be hard to keep on schedule sometimes. However, regular post schedules become more important as your readership grows. Decide on a reasonable schedule and stick to it! We post each Sunday. Well, sometimes I forget and have to post on Monday. No one is perfect. The best way to keep on schedule is to write ahead. We usually have around 15 draft articles waiting to be posted. I am still in graduate school and often don’t have time to write anything. Fifteen articles is enough that I can avoid writing for an entire semester and remain on schedule. Although, I make sure not to do that! Keeping a buffer helps keep the pressure off and keeps the blog fun.

3) Don’t stare at your hit counter

It takes time to build a successful blog. High readership involves networking with other bloggers: reading their posts regularly and commenting is the best method. A successful blog is one that has a regular readership and a positive impact. It doesn’t matter if you only have 10 readers. What matters is they like what you write and are positively influenced by it.  JP doesn’t see a huge readership by any means, but I am satisfied to see regular readers and a positive impact on them. One of the best compliments you can have from a reader is a correction. It means they care enough to read your writing and want to help you be as correct as you can be.

4) Research your articles

Yeah, I know blogging is supposed to be fun. What’s fun about research? A well researched article is a point of pride for a writer. It shows readers that the author cares enough to spend time to educate themselves about a topic before writing. A researched article also goes a long way toward that positive impact we want to leave. It also helps the writer learn ideas they may not encounter otherwise.

Now by research I don’t mean Wikipedia. Unlike many librarians, I don’t have anything against Wikipedia. It is, however, just a starting point. It is easy to research anime/manga topics online. Your local library will have databases and books about both anime and manga. You can also use Google’s “site:edu” command to narrow your search to colleges. Google Books and Google Scholar are also good choices.

There is an amazing amount of research out there about the mediums and other aspects of Japanese pop culture. In fact, in librarian circles we recognize manga as superior to standard books for teaching certain literacy skills (If you want to read more about this, look up the reference article below at your local library). There is even extensive research on yaoi’s benefits for teen girls.

5) Consider Copyright

All bloggers need to consider copyright laws. It is easy to unknowingly violate them. While it is unlikely you will get into trouble, observing copyright laws gives your blog more professionalism. Your blog represents you. You never know, a future employer may even see your blog some day.

I wrote an overview of US Copyright law if you want to learn more.

References

Schwartz, Adam & Rubinstein-Avila, Eliane (2006). Understanding the manga hype: Uncovering the multimodality of comic-book literacies. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 50[1].  40–49. doi:10.1598/JAAL.50.1.5.