Blogging and The Noise Problem
Blogging is seen (and talked about) as being a great way to engage with your ‘audience’. That’s alright for the authors and early adopters who have an audience of 100’s of thousands of people, but a couple of months in and you are getting maybe 2 visitors a day, should you give up?
Lot’s of people do give up quickly, maybe because there isn’t an instant reaction to the things they are saying. Maybe we all deep down think we are going to be the next Seth Godin or Aaron Wall and we soon realise we’re not.
There is also lots of advice out there for the best way to blog about the best way to blog but some of the best tips I have are:
- People get bored quickly - are you really that interesting?
- For every blog, there are a thousand others saying the same things, maybe in a better way.
- Unless you are a serious blogger, chances are your numbers will be low.
- Blog traffic is hard to measure - some people view the pages online, some read the feed. Feedburner helps but you can’t guarantee which feed the person is reading.
Don’t let me put you off though - let’s face it, this is my first post on a new blog.
Remember though, it’s bloody hard work. If, however, you get a small audience of five of your existing clients, and they really buy into what you say, then surely, I would count that as a success - it’s all relative after all.
Comment by garri September 1, 2007 @ 3:50 pm
Good to see you back Craig! Noticed you’ve dumped Typepad in favour of WP - feel better?
You’re right: blogging is bloody hard work! And I can see how easy it would be to give in, I’ve done it myself with a few tentative projects.
Instead I’ve piled all my efforts into the one project, Holiday Pad, which started over 2 years ago and I’m still at it! In fact, it is almost a full-time job.
Having some good press and a huge increase in both visitors and subscribers, certainly provides motivation to carry on. That, and having a firm long term strategy born out of personal circumstances helps keep the motivation ticking over.
But it depends on what your expectations are I guess. If you get into it with the sole aim of making lots of money with Adsense then you may end up being disappointed and lack the stamina to continue.
If you’re looking to this wonderful medium in order to establish an idea, and learn a lot of stuff both technical and creative whilst you go along, then those rewards far outweigh any pennies you’ll earn from Adsense.
Like I said, it depends on what your expectations are (and your long term goals)
Comment by Craig Killick September 2, 2007 @ 6:33 am
Great to hear Holiday Pad is going well, I remember when you first mentioned it . Some great properties… I’ve just ’stumbled’ it.
Yes, one of the guys I work with got us into Wordpress and haven’t looked back. My last blog was just getting a bit messy and didn’t have a direction, so I closed it and concentrated on the work one but found there was stuff I wanted to blab about where it conflicted so back onto this one again.
Not looking to monetise it, just keep raising awareness and play with some ideas as I move more into e-commerce side of things.
I haven’t been on the old forum for quite some time. I used to get frustrated a bit and lost interest… Great to hear from you.