So . . . this is my one-hundredth blog entry. If you're into base-10 numbers, as most of us are, that's exciting news! I for one am very pleased with myself for getting to this point. I wasn't sure that I would be able to, worrying that I might run out of topics before then, but it seems not - there is always the opportunity to write about what constitutes a pizza, or offhand comments heard in hallways, or bees. Today I'm going to mention some of the lessons obtained through my experience thus far. What I've learned after the jump.
Lesson one: "After the Jump" is meaningless to people accessing your blog through either direct links (via Facebook, etc.) or a search that returns specific entries rather than the blog's home page. As a result I have had people ask me what the heck after the jump means, because they never get the blog this way. Oh well.
Lesson two: You're not going to have a widely-read blog if you write long entries. Early in this experience I was told my entries (which are around 500 words) are way too long because, as my friend put it, "no one on the internet has an attention span." Hey, I'm an academic. 500 words is short for me. Skim it if you want.
Lesson three: If you want a lot of hits, link to something current or a picture that will be widely searched. My most-read entry was about vegetarianism, but I think the reason it's received so many hits is because I had a link to Lady Gaga in her meat dress. Therefore anyone searching "Lady Gaga Meat Dress" would get my blog. More recently my entry on astrology and magic in the world got a lot of hits because one of the topics in it (Braco the Gazer) was mentioned extensively on Howard Stern.
Lesson four: Get interesting topics, or at least make them sound interesting, for the Facebook link. Blog on the Tiger Mom: lots of hits. Blog on bees and honey: very few hits (which is too bad, because I think it was a good entry). I think they're equally good, but one was topical and concerned an issue commented on by Facebook friends, and the other was about corruption in the honey trade.
Lesson five: Research pays off. My previously most-read link, prior to Lady Gaga's Meat Dress taking over the top spot, was the one on Canada's Prime Ministers. It was the entry that I spent the most time on, so that I could find out which PMs were drunks and which were racists. It was well-received, the link was re-posted, and I got a lot of hits.
Lesson six: Don't worry about readership based on the comment count. Blogger has a feature whereby I can see how many hits each entry receives, and that satisfies my obsessiveness (of course, if I could see who was reading it, and how long they spent doing so, and which sections were paid more attention, and what people were wearing when they read it . . . well, I've said too much). I hardly ever get comments (because of lazy readers like you), which used to worry me. Since then, I have seen blogs and sites with counters on the page, and some average one comment per thousand hits. So now I don't feel so bad.
Lesson seven: Writing about the topics that interest me the most usually don't interest other people the most. It seems when I combine decision-making biases and basketball the hit count goes way, way down. Oh well. It's interesting to me, and at least three or four others, so I'm gonna keep those coming. I can't always be ranting about the state of fiction or making snide comments about Sarah Palin.
Lesson eight: Proofread several times. It's apalling to me how many mistkaes I've made that I missed on my re-raed. I'm sure each blogg entry has it's fair share of these erorrs. I apologize sinserely for any that I haven't caugt.
Lesson nine: Post on weekends once in a while. I get about twice as many hits on blog entries posted on the weekend as I do during the week. I suspect, however, that if I did this all the time the effect would wear off. Some experimentation on this topic may happen soon.
Lesson ten: If a topic is top of mind, write it. If I don't do it right away, or very soon after the idea hits me, I often forget it. There is a virtual graveyard full of unwritten blogs that were at least as brilliant as the ones I have been posting.
Anyway, hope you've been enjoying reading the blog as much as I've enjoyed writing it so far. No plans to stop, got a list of topics to write about soon (half of which will be forgotten by this evening), and a lot of bad jokes, vitriol, and sarcasm ready to emerge.
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