Don't panic

by Prometheus 6
October 4, 2003 - 4:54pm.
on Random rant

I'm not going to stop blogging. If was going to do that, I'd just stop. I'm not this guy. Alpha Primates don't run around announcing, they act.

My health is better; y'all missed all the drama, as you were intended to.

I anticipate less traffic because posting frequency is more important than posting quality or subject matter; in fact, once you've reached a certain visibility (in Ecosystem terms, I'd say it's Marauding Marsupials) the two things that best draw new traffic from people already in the blogging mix is to post frequently and to leave good comments on highly trafficked blogs. Both of which I do; but I'm actually more interested in people blogs. THIS is a people blog, I'm just a weird person.

Link whoring can keep you visible, but it's too damn much work, from what I see. Nothing wrong with being a link whore, I'm just not one, is all. Another effective method is the referral thing; those weekly lists of cool posts of the week. You have a nice scheduled release of links and a fairly consistent viewpoint, you can become a mandatory stop for people that share your viewpoint. But that's even more work.

It just comes down to my desire NOT to be a totally online geek. To be able to talk without parsing myself all the time because of the lack of body language and other similar contexts.

Approaching health has been hard work, and as I get closer to it and have more energy, I find I want to relax. Call me selfish.

But I'm still looking out for myself. That means I still have to call bullshit when I see it. And I still need more feedback for my thinking processes than you can get without limiting myself to a crew that, on the whole, I find boring as hell. And you keep writing for your audience you eventually…inevitably…box yourself in. That's something I've never allowed.

Fewer posts mean each has to count, so exactly what will change around here is uncertain because I have to understand how to choose before I choose. So whatever change I make is not in the immediate future. It's just close enough that I get to consider it all right now. And I get to post about it right now because, … it's my damn (personal) blog.

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Submitted by glenn (not verified) on October 4, 2003 - 7:31pm.

Very true re: posting frequency. It took me awhile to figure it out, but if I post once an hour while I'm at work I keep a consistent readership and get maybe 5-10 new hits in Technorati. But then again, I hate my job so blogging is my release :-)

Submitted by Al-Muhajabah (not verified) on October 5, 2003 - 2:53pm.

It's the laziness factor most of all that limits the amount of "link whoring" that I do. I've done the "weekly best posts" thing to highlight good posts in Muslim blogs, but I had to cut it back to only checking about a dozen blogs because of the amount of time it took.

Submitted by P6 (not verified) on October 5, 2003 - 3:29pm.

Al-M:Technical point: the "best of" list technique is link pimping.