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.
write all that stuff then kill it? unlikely lor. but i blog just so friends & family (overseas) get an update on whats going on in my life. i try not to dwell on too much on the negative i.e. getting sick or heartbroken. i don’t want people to go kill themselves because i depressed them more than necessary. heh. i’m not concern about popularity either. but i visit & leave comments on blogs, its a pastime. ya i know {get a life} no shit sherlock.
this is a great article, miyagi-san.
Thank you Machine-san, I like it too.
[…] In my travels I found some advice from, ironically, Mr Myagi Don’t kill yourself trying to get noticed. . The author is taking an indirect stab at the Daphne Teo’s and the people that steal hits by adding Web 2.0 and Ajax to their blogs just to appear in the most popular Technorati searchers. […]
Swifty Completes NaNoWriMo!
Hello Mr miyagi,
i hope people with major attention deficit syndrome will wake up with this article. thanks for the Good Morning Yesterday link.
i am hoping to see more substance as much as aesthetics [ in any forms possible ]in the blogs of our local bloggers.
you rock la.
cheers
ej
Sniff Sniff… I am resurrected but only because you want a piece of me darling miyagi *wink*
Perhaps the introduction of Pajama Media will force bloggers to have more substance and credibility.
Linked to your post on my (hopefully interesting) site
I can’t laugh after hearing about idler…the title looks like a bad omen now.
I think the greatest blogicide must be http://chewonitcomics.blogspot.com/
it was an entertaining blog with very interesting view on current affairs. but some guy out there cannot take the humor from comic and start flaming him, thus forcing him to shut down the blog.
Well, at least we can still find his comic every sunday on the papers.
Gee anon, i’m sure Miyagi appreciates your 2 cents worth. You must be the person in highschool who got voted ‘most likely to leave tactless comments on blogs.’
miyagi> apologies for lack of tact. No malice intended.
grr> point noted. will shut up now.
blinkymummy is losing readership not because she’s not slicing her wrist, getting plastic surgery, or insulting the disabled.
she’s losing her readers because she’s alienating a lot of people with her pseudo-intellectual analysis.
thing is, although she tries really hard to get hot and heavy with existential issues, she lacks suitable critical faculty to produce any cogent, intelligent arguments to support her point of view.
just read how she ripped into a teacher’s comment that he doesn’t let students read her blog cos it contains vulgarities. it doesn’t matter that chewren are gonna learn vulgarities anyway. what matters is the message being sent when a teacher directs his or her students to her blog.
so until she suddenly becomes intellectually-enabled, i will not be reading her blog anymore.
To Blog or Not to Blog
Then there’s TECHNORATI, which has driven some bloggers, like Daphne Teo, to commit blogicide and either shut their blogs down entirely, or, as in the case of Arissa Luna, use “password protection” as a way of allowing only registered and approved r…
Blogs, they’re afterall part of life that I believe blogging is like an activity similar to clubbing, etc…that you might have to relinquish someday. For reasons good or bad. Fame, readership, all these again, do have a life span.
[…] ANTHROPOMORPHISM maybe, that’s what I see in many blogs or just an alter-ego character of one that he/she represents on-line. The rest, some are informative while there are pure diaries seeking no fame. Speaking of which, the lust for popularity had drawn many people into blogging craving to strike a Blog of Gold someday. They worked very hard to gain (most of the time) instant readership and self-destruct to arouse attention just to rekindle the lost glory? That’s where I find this article interesting by our renowned blogger Miyagi on — Don’t kill yourself trying to get noticed. Visit the blog for a good read. Recommended. So what about this blog of mine? I dunno seriously, I use it as a quick reference from my write-ups and collected links for my research, where ever, whenever I need them. So long as I get net access. The rest, I think nobody understands this blog, well that’s what I hear from readers. Just one thing about blogging, integrity that is. another good read at EgoConigto […]
Tongue in cheek article you’ve written. It was a good read.
Grandfather Stories…
But the article that made me feel the proudest was the famous Mr MiyagiÂ’s article of November, 30, 2005 in TODAY, when he recommended this blog to readers of his weekly column Chip of the Old Blog. You can read his article here.…
[…] http://miyagi.sg/?p=203 […]