The high school that I used to attend a long time ago, thought it would be interesting to make the students run daily laps on the outdoor track. Maybe they thought we had too much energy, or needed the exercise, but it was also a fast way to weed out the smokers.
I was known despite my high school shyness as the fastest girl around, my record beaten only by Murray Shickford. Who was also known as the bad boy to avoid at all costs.
Murray could outrun me in long distance races, but I beat him in the short bursts.
Then one day I remember being surprised when he suddenly pulled out from behind me one day, and passed me with a wave.
That bugged me a lot.
I gave it all I had, and I did eventually pass him, and won that race. But he won the next, and the next, until one day while we were running round in circles, I just stopped.
Quit outright.
All I could think was why on earth was I running myself ragged getting all sweaty?
What was the point?
Sometimes that’s the way I feel about blogging.
While I love it, and really enjoy our communications, the relationships that we build, the village that I am part of, there are times when I get to thinking what’s the point?
Why do we do this, what is our end result?
Why spend hours crafting, researching, writing and editing unique and interesting posts, taking great photos, tweaking, publishing them, only to find that we are not reaching the audience that we thought we would?
Now before you click away in anger because I dared to say anything at all, I know that the sense of community I have with my fellow bloggers is the driving force here behind my blog. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have continued to blog for almost 6 years.
Being part of a community that shares, and cares, grows, and develops into a interesting group of people is one of the reasons I think we all blog. To connect with the people in our villages, our audience, our readers, those who we know, and those who we are to meet in the future.
It’s also for ourselves, our self esteem, our joy of being able to express what we are seeing, and feeling at a given moment. Sharing it with others who feel, and understand the same, although that circle may be smaller then we want it to be.
But the blogging world is changing
All things change, life moves forward, new technology becomes the next big thing, people get busier, and have less time to read blogs, less interest. We need to change with the way the world is going in order to keep our blogs alive, fulfilling, and interesting for more then just our immediate little circles.
And while there is a lot of conflicting information out there, write longer posts, write shorter post, don’t write words at all… use photos. Don’t use photos, use words. Some of it is going to help us.
The most consistent piece of information I’ve read, is be yourself.
Oh, and if we bloggers don’t evolve, we will be going the way of the dinosaurs. Great! We will all turn into fossils, lovely.
I want to explore some of those ideas, I hope that you are as interested in finding out what the predictions for the blogging world are as much as I am. And not just finding out what they think is going to happen, but how we can change and grow our blogs.
Because I’m not interested in turning into a fossil, and I doubt you are too.
For those of us bloggers who don’t write about DIY, food, or technical trends, what keeps our blogs out there for others to find?
What happens when you are a naked niche?
Don’t cover up we are not naked while blogging, I just coined that phrase, to describe bloggers like us, who write about what inspires them, the interesting things that happen to them in their daily grind. We don’t consistently fit the pattern of niche blogging. We generally are not Mommy bloggers, gardening bloggers, DIY’s bloggers, then what are we? And much of the information out there really doesn’t apply to our blogs.
Some of you don’t dabble in any other platform of social media at all… and that’s fine, but beyond the blogging link ups, and follow me, I’ll follow you, what else can we do to grow our audience?
Because you can’t call it a circus if there are no animals, and the audience is missing can you?
For myself I want to be proud of my blog when I mention it to a stranger, I don’t want to cringe at the thought of them judging me by what I am writing. I want to stand straight, and be proud of what I have poured onto this page. I want them to know who, and what I am through my images, my interaction, my writing, my audience. And I want them to come back and read my new posts, every time.
And if you want the same, let me know.
Incidentally, I did beat Murray in more races then I lost, it took a lot of effort, and sweat, but we pretty much ended up neck in neck by the end of the school year.
Our personal blogging villages can all use a population explosion, new readers, new faces. I have some ideas, and I am sure you do also. Let’s put our heads together and figure out how us naked niche bloggers can not only survive, but flourish in our villages.