I ran into a virtual colleague who was impressed by the numbers of people that had read entries on my blog. WordPress does a terrific job of keeping count and reportedly doesn’t count your own visits. I am happy with my numbers and what’s happening with it so felt pretty good that I was asked.
I didn’t have the heart to talk about the content of this person’s blog, but it could just as easily be entitled “47 Ways That I’m Smarter Than You.” With all of the potential blogs that there are to read, I think that the tone of any particular blog will be crucial to its success or lack thereof. My sense is that folks read blogs to feel like part of the online community and not necessarily to be lectured to. There are internet resources that you can read if you just want to be taught something or to just feel not so worthy in your chosen area.
When you read a blog post, it should be the start of a conversation and not a sole source of pontification.
The analogy that I would use is one of walking into a Chapters or other book store. There are all kinds of books available and you are free to wander around and choose what you want.
Think, however, about how the books are arranged. With all of the variety that’s available, they are clearly arranged with the potential readers in mind. You don’t find the books on Economics at the entrance. That’s not how you draw people into the store. Next time you visit a bookstore, take a look at what’s up front. They are typically warm, welcoming titles to get you intrigued enough to come in and look around.
And, for people like me, there’s always a computer so that you can search and find your title. It’s a nice feature for a blog as well.
Large companies spend a great deal in market research to determine just how best to get and keep people interested and involved. The same lessons are easily applied to the blogging community, don’t you think? If you wrote a book composed of your own blog posts, on what shelf would the folks at Chapters put it?
p.s. apologies in advance to any Economics majors who stumble into this post.
