As I posted the other day, Weekly Geeks has returned. WG 2009-38 is about expanding the readership of your blog. This only sort of applies to me: I enjoy blogging and try to post things that might interest others, but I’ll still post even if no one reads it. And while the majority of my posts are book reviews, I don’t consider myself a book blogger. My only requirement for a blog post is that it must contain at least one link. That’s it. Generally I avoid writing about my day-to-day life, but only because I already have a personal online journal (and it’s not all that interesting to people who don’t know me…or most of the people who do, for that matter). I try to review every book I read or listen to, and I avoid posting more than once a day. I don’t really have any goals for it. Maybe I’m being too casual.
That said, of course I want to appeal to more readers. Unfortunately, the suggestions listed in the WG article don’t really help. According to Google Analytics (which I find less than illuminating at the best of times), the majority of my visitors come from Geocities, presumably on the hunt for writing prompts. Twitter comes in a distant second, which isn’t surprising since I have it set up to automatically tweet whenever I make a new blog post. I just recently eased the search functionality by adding titles and tags to all my old entries, which I suppose counts as progress.
I like to think my blog is easy for new readers to dive into. I almost never post something that would make more sense if you had been reading for a while, I don’t use jargon or inside jokes (that I’m aware of), and I have no rating system to explain. If folks care to continue reading, I’m easy to find: I’m first when Googling “utter randomonium” and third for “melydia” (though the first two hits are also me, and contain links to my homepage as well). The RSS feed subscription button is also prominently displayed near the top of the page.
So I dunno. I’ve read enough blogs and blogging tips to know more or less what I should be doing to increase my readership, but I’m not sure popularity and visibility is all that important to me. It’s just a blog. It amuses me. Hopefully it amuses others. The end.
P.S. – The phrase is “couldn’t care less.” If you could care less, then you must care at least a little bit. Just sayin’.
Welcome to the Geeks! I like the white space readability here – I’m going to visit a few of your posts to find out more about you…
Thanks! I actually used to participate in Weekly Geeks when Dewey ran it – my blog at the time was called “It Never Stops”.
Thanks to WG, I found your blog. Will check it out.
Weekly Geeks: Blogging Tips