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Alan Creech
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December 18, 2006
> 1:08 PM
blogging & popularity > some observations It's funny, this blogging thing. If you're at all familiar with the landscape, especially in Christian circles, you already know that. I've been at this thing for 5 or 6 years - something like that. Since before I knew they were called "blogs." When I first heard that word, by the way, I didn't like the sound of it. It's an ugly word. I tried to resist it but to no avail. The tide was too strong and I was swept away. So, I blog, and so do you. And so as we do this, we obviously want people to read what we're writing. I've said this before, and there's nothing really wrong with that. Certainly that desire can get carried away, as can any other desire that's basically fine in itself. So, maybe you say a few things that a few people find interesting, and they keep reading. They put you on their blogroll and perhaps even link to you in a post (a far superior nod). You might even get lucky and another blogger who already has a couple o' thousand people a day reading their musings, likes something you said and links to it! Aagghh! The tipping point ala Andrew Jones (seriously, you know that's how it works). Then a bunch of people start checking you out to see what the big-shot said was so cool, some of them hang around, some of them keep cruising. It's an interesting phenomenon. Then maybe you get sort of a following. That sounds weird doesn't it but that's what it amounts to. Especially if you're in the Christian blogosphere (that with which I am most familiar) and not just a journalistic blogger (one who primarily links to other posts or stories). Some people will like what you write, how you think about things, and how you say what you are saying - and so, they will become a regular reader. Most lurk (read without interaction), but there are a few who are so stimulated by your words that they come out of the dark land of lurkdome and comment. And most of the time that's a good thing. Of course every now and then you wish they wouldn't but oh well, such is the blogoscape (by the way I want full credit for that word if nobody else has used it yet - blogoscape, coined by Alan D. Creech, odd emerging church catholic monastic mystical blogger). Here's weird for you - I didn't plan on saying ANY of those first 3 paragraphs. I just wanted to make a little observational list about what might make one a popular blogger. Funny. So yeah, your "numbers" go up (by now you know you've installed that sitemeter code thing) and you find it fairly exciting that THAT many people actually make time to read your blog every day of their lives. It's cool and weird at the same time. Then maybe you try to do things to increase your traffic - for different reasons - could be you just like the attention or maybe you've also got Google ads and you want to make a little side money. There's also nothing wrong with that but I won't get into defending it here. Like I said, you've been tipped, linked, blogrolled all over, talked about both negatively and positively, etc, and your numbers go up. And then... ...something happens and they take a dive. For some reason it upsets you - you don't know why because it's not supposed to matter that much to you, but there you go, it does anyway. Course I've never gotten to the couple o' thousand a day point, not even close, but I'm on quite a few blogrolls out there for some reason. You'd think more people would regularly read this blog with all those links but the most it's ever been for any time has been probably 200 unique visitors a day. That's probably back when I was quite more the big mouth revolutionary than I tend to be now. I also blogged a lot more than I do now as well. I'm sure those are a couple of big factors. It's down probably to about 90 a day now. It's interesting, like, it doesn't "bother" me really, it's more like - hmm, wonder why that is, like sociologically or even particularly. Now, what might bother me are the possible reasons that people might drop out - like maybe I've changed in my thinking a bit over the last few years and they don't like that. Or maybe certain topics have risen to prominence in my circles (or former? circles) and I have chosen to stay mostly silent on them. That's kind of funky but whatever. So, down to any kind of a list - what might make one "popular" as a blogger in the Christian blogoscape?
technorati tags > blogging, christian blogs, emerging church, popularity Labels: blogging, emerging church 0 Comments:| permalink | e-mail me | 
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