There are much better ways of getting your blogs noticed – try being interesting!
WITH more than 60 million blogs in the world, what are your blog’s chances of getting noticed? And can you improve these chances?
Even with online tools like Technorati (technorati.com) and RSS (really simple syndication, a tool available on most web portals like MSN and Google) which help readers subscribe to sites and organise their list of things to read online, you’ll still have to do something to catch their attention and make a visit to your site worth their while.
To that end, blogger Blinkymummy (blinkymummy.blogspot.com), a 29-year-old lists what she thinks makes readers sit up and take note of blogs.
Saying that she has been “losing readership”, she wonders if she’d gain more fans if she were to “scold handicap people with no hesitation, go for extreme plastic surgery or commit blog suicide because of flamers”.
Read more at TODAYonline
Technorati Tags: blog, blogicide, daphneteo, Singapore, technorati, TODAY
Now, that last bit — committing blog suicide — more popularly known online as “blogicide”, seems to be a popular way of getting attention, as the number of comments that follow a blog post proclaiming the end of the blog would attest. You get people who don’t want you to kill your blog and you get people who want to know why you killed your blog — instant increase in readership!
There have been so many blogicides lately that some of the editors at local blog aggregator, Tomorrow.sg, are thinking of setting up an obituaries section listing these on a weekly basis.
One erstwhile blogger, Very Poisonous Lady (verypoisonouslady.blogspot.com), closed her blog by deleting her posts from public view, leaving only the messageboard on the site, which has been inundated with messages of goodwill and pleas for her return.
Another, Daphne Teo (bleedingblackbutterflies.blogspot.com), deleted her site completely, but this act spawned a whole slew of commentary on other blogs and a flurry of search engine requests for information about her, catapulting her name into the top 10 of search terms on Technorati.
Top 10 out of 60 million blogs. See? It works! If she hadn’t committed blogicide, I wouldn’t have known who Daphne Teo was! And when I did, I too wanted to find out why she killed her blog!
Apart from trying to get attention, there must be other legitimate reasons for voluntarily discontinuing a blog. At the other end of the spectrum, some bloggers close their sites when they get too much unwanted attention, like Delirious Dream (deliriousdream.blogspot.com), a (former) blogger readers believed to be a TV actress, and who closed down her blog because, well, people believed her to be a TV actress.
Of course, the attention you get from killing a blog is always fleeting. A blog that keeps readers coming back is one that always has a story to tell. One blog that caught my attention is called Good Morning Yesterday (goodmorningyesterday.blogspot.com), because its written by someone born in 1952, probably making him one of the oldest known bloggers in Singapore.
Mr Lam Chun See has taken pains to document things about Singapore he thinks are quickly vanishing, or which have vanished from all but his memory.
His memories of Chinatown are definitely worth a read, and you know he’s already become an avid blogger because he decides to go down to the scene of one of his friend’s stories, just to take a look:
“My friend Chun Sing’s description of life in Sago Street and Sago Lane is so interesting, I could not resist going there to take a look. Besides taking some pictures of the area, I also helped myself to a nice bowl of beef noodle from the Chinatown hawker centre.”
This encapsulates what blogging’s about — it makes me want to go down to Sago Lane and illustrate Mr Lam’s stories with what I see with my own eyes, maybe accompanied by a bowl of beef noodles.
Mr Miyagi aka Benjamin Lee has been entertaining readers at miyagi.sg for over a year, and is very happy to know that there are bloggers much older than him.
Leave a Reply