When Blogging meets Room 101

I was recently challenged by Mancunian Vintage to share the gripes that would enter my personal Room 101, and despite the fact I have as many gripes as everyone else – mushrooms, slow walkers with wheelie suitcases and Gordon Ramsey, to name but a few – I found it hard to think what would make sense to write about on this blog.

I don’t think 400 words on why I hate mushrooms would make a particularly riveting read (though if you are a mushroom-hater, please know that you’re not alone) so I thought I’d channel this challenge into blogging bits and pieces that get my goat instead. So without further ado, here is my blogging version of Room 101…

Colourful fonts are hard to readColourful / hard to read fonts

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for accents of colour and I love a good font – check out my Pinterest boards if you don’t believe me – but there is a time and a place for a royal blue serif typeface and it isn’t in the body of your blog posts.

Blocks of brightly coloured and/or elaborate text aren’t easy on the eye, and when your day job involves using a computer for eight hours a day, trying to decipher a blog post that looks like it was written by Jackson Pollock on a Haribo high isn’t the way to my heart.

wp-logoWordPress.com affiliate links

Not cool, WordPress, not cool. I recently collaborated with a brand for a product review and kept being told that there were affiliate links attached to the products, and could I please remove them.

This was somewhat confusing since I’m not signed up to any affiliates schemes and so I didn’t have a clue what the (very patient) PR contact was on about. Turns out WP are allowed to shove in affiliate links wherever they see fit, and this is also an issue with the Jetpack plugin for WP.org users. Thanks to Hayley for helping me suss out the problem!

PR Request hashtag#PRrequest

The humble hashtag has a lot to answer for (I think it’s probably best to skip right past #yolo) from excessive Instagram hashtags to my personal peeve, the PR requests tag.

For the record, when used properly this can be a really effective way of connecting journalists, bloggers, industry experts and PRs, but I’ve also noticed an increasing number of serious requests from bloggers that are at best cheeky and at worst, downright rude. Perhaps it’s my British sensibilities, but I would never dream of asking for a new kitchen/car/hairdryer ‘in exchange for review’ on Twitter and yes, all of those are legit requests I’ve seen recently. On the plus side, #PRrequest is fast becoming my go-to on Twitter for a giggle, so there is a sliver lining.

Phew! Well now I’ve got that off my chest it’s over to you. What blogging gripes would you put into Room 101?

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8 Comments

  1. October 12, 2013 / 2:06 pm

    Excellent gripes m’dear… love the font one (no I can’t read that yellow handwriting font all that well…) and I didn’t know that affiliate links could just be added at will :o

    PR requests….. some people are just downright rude aren’t they…. though I’m going to have a gander on Twitter now :D

    • October 20, 2013 / 7:49 pm

      Why thank you : ) Yeah the font choice can be really annoying! I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of some blogging gripes but that one is a real turn-off.

  2. October 14, 2013 / 9:01 pm

    Haha! J and I only use the PR Request hashtag when we’re trying to be funny, searching by it does bring up lots of hilarious requests. It must work for some though. ;)

    Tara xo

    • October 20, 2013 / 7:50 pm

      The comical ones are good for a laugh – it’s those really dodgy ones (often from tiny blogs who have been up and running for about 10 minutes) with serious requests that drive me bonkers!

  3. October 16, 2013 / 3:19 pm

    hahah PRrequst gripes me too! Umm i have far too many that will probably get me shunned so i’ma keep quiet :PP

    • October 20, 2013 / 7:52 pm

      Aww what a tease! I thoroughly recommend doing a post like this though – it’s refreshing to get some of it off my chest ;)

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