Wednesday, February 22, 2012

You would blog too if it happened to you

I wrote a post awhile back with tips on how to get more traffic to your blog. Most of which I wasn't doing, because I'm blog-shy. And the rest were things I made up. Maybe not entirely, but it definitely wasn't very helpful. One of the points I made was that some people make business cards with their URL on them and hand them out. I was skeptical as to who would do such a thing and then promptly received a comment from another blogger that admitted to doing it.

:O <---Insert foot here

Although I haven't looked back at that post to see if I've started doing any of those things, I can tell you for sure that I have done one thing. Okay, I didn't make up business cards, but I did hand out my blog address to someone I met in a mall*. He ended up reading it and the next time I saw him at the mall* he told me what he thought about my posts. He said he read my blog three times, but I think he probably read one post three times, because let's face it, not many people have that kind of dedication.

Also, someone from facebook recently posted something about their blog and instead of not saying anything and wondering what she wrote about, I invited her to be blog-buddies. I'm pretty sure I used those exact words. Clearly, I've made strides in overcoming my blog-shyness. And although I have a lot of room for improvement, I thought you would be proud of me that I took this one, very small, step to being a serious blogger.

Okay, fine, more of a serious blogger.

A long time ago, I was reading a blog and the author admitted in a new post that she wrote a post awhile back and then buried it in older posts in hopes that no one would read it. Ultimately, she linked the new post to the buried post, but I couldn't help but wonder who would do that. I mean, if you're going to write something, write it. And if you don't want anyone to read it, then don't post it. Seems simple enough, right.

And then I turned around and did the exact same thing. I wrote a post and then less than 12 hours later I decided I needed to bury it so that it wasn't the first thing you read when you logged on. And then less than 12 hours after that I realized that it was a dumb-shit thing to do and promptly unpublished it. Now it's sitting there in my drafts mocking me for not having the courage to post it. And now, if I decide to post it, I'll have to rewrite it so that the "yesterday's and today's" are replaced with "two weeks ago", or else, post it in chronological order, thereby burying it once again.

I guess I didn't take that many steps out of my blog-shyness as I thought.

*I said "mall" but I meant "bar"


Update - I realized that burying the post is dumb. Here it is.  Thanks for your supportive comments.

6 comments:

  1. Blog shyness? By creating a blog aren't you less-than-shy, putting your words out there into the ether? No one is going to hurt you here, it's the internet, where everyone is super-supportive and loving and never looking to anonymously flame someone.

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  2. DO NOT BURY ANYTHING. I wrote once about buying tampons and pads that got no response, but oh well. You get up and learn from it.

    And I find that most of the time reading other people's stuff and commenting does wonders for your traffic. Of course, you only do this if you really like their stuff. I have a tendency to get bored with blogs pretty easily unless I'm a fan of the person (or two people like the beer gentleman up above me) and need to see what they've written.

    Not everybody can make a blog interesting. I think you're a good writer and I'd like to see what you have to say.

    Make us all proud, darling. Make yourself unshy. Nobody bites unless they're a complete dick.

    Do it. :-)

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  3. Thanks for the support!! I think you're all right and it should see the light of day.

    Pickle - isn't that exactly what happens on the internet? :)

    Beer - it's not a hate mail inducing post... I don't think...

    B - thanks for the kind words. Reading and commenting is by far the best way to get traffic. Pretty sure that's how I've gotten all of my readers outside of friends/family.

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  4. lol, I'm going to have to step up my game if I'm going to get mentioned on such a professional blog! 75% of my blog traffic is because of an annual series I do on hot hockey players during the stanley cup run. Sweaty and shirtless seem to be in demand.

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  5. Hilary - professional? I'm sorry, you must have this blog mistaken for another blog... :) Sweaty & shirtless?? I'm in!!

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  6. Yeah . . . I couldn't say that were "shy". Shy people don't write blogs, they write journals.

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