I've been really into blogging since before I could drive. I participated in a blog for class when I was a freshman in high school, and then I created my own on Myspace when I was a sophomore. I blogged about my thoughts, my life and pretty much everything that no one found interesting. To me, it was just an online journal. I had plenty of readers, but I never thought about trying to get more. When I outgrew Myspace (which was more recent than I would like to admit), I moved back to Blogger, where I had originally discovered the world of blogging several years before. When I moved, none of my readers followed. For the first time, I was actually writing just for myself. It didn't bother me ... until I met a community of bloggers.
When I moved to Boone this summer, I didn't know anyone besides my aunt and a few long-lost high school friends. I'm an introvert, so I enjoyed my time by myself. But by the middle of June, I craved to become a part of the community I saw at work. This community was a group of people in their mid and late 20s and early 30s who seemed to know more about the world than I did. And they did. Specifically, they knew more about blogging. There's Paul, who is a photojournalist. His blog focuses on his humanitarian and relief photos from around the world. He also has a blog just for his dog, which is silly but always makes me laugh. (Unfortunately, as it's written by a dog, it's never up-to-date.) Then there's Hope, who is a social media specialist. Her blog is just whatever she thinks of at the time, which is also cool. It reminds me of my blog a little. But my point here is Sarah's blog. I met Sarah at the end of June, and she started her blog shortly afterward. I'm not going to explain the idea behind it - you can check it out for yourself if you're interested.
My point is that Sarah's blog is about as new as mine, but she has hundreds of readers. She publicized among her friends (as in we talked about it over lunch), and we all linked from our blogs to hers. (You can check out my post about it here.) Other than that, she's done very little. She somehow knows how people find her blog - I suspect she's using Google Analytics. People come to it in the most random ways; someone even found it by searching for porn. (If you've taken a look at Sarah's blog, you'll see that she's radical but doesn't have a lot to do with porn.) But what makes these people click? And, more importantly, after they click, do they read?
In class today, Dr. Thornburg asked how so many people know about and participate on Yadkin View. I assume it mostly spreads by word of mouth. My parents didn't really get sucked into it until news about my brother and his basketball abilities appeared; at that point, I think someone told them about it.
I think online news functions in several ways like a blog. So how do we get readers to turn to it? Obviously Yadkin View doesn't advertise; perhaps it's only spread by word of mouth. Yet almost everyone in Yadkin County knows about it. Sarah doesn't publicize her blog a lot, and she still has hundreds of readers, many of them people she has never met or even heard of. How do they do it? It's the unanswered question. Maybe someone has the answer. I certainly don't, as can be seen from the amount of people who view my blog.
It blows my mind to see how many followers and readers some people have. I just don't understand how it works. And yet I think it's a pretty important part of blogging and news. If we don't know why readers come to our website, how can we ensure that they stay there? If we don't find out, I'd venture to say they won't stay.
No comments:
Post a Comment