Old Army Term: Situation Naturally All _______ up!
Been a good week, only had a few problems with WordPress.com and I am sure they are tired of my chivy attitude and my comments concerning their lackluster performance. They need to learn, that if you put lipstick on a pig … It is still going to be a pig in the end.
This week it is “Fastest Growing Blogs” on the net. Which would be just fine if it were “honest and true” but it aint.
Gonna go out on the limb here and venture an opinion about people that blog on these systems. First, I believe all of them suffer from one common ailment, most of them are somewhat frustrated by statistics and counts. As Creative Endeavors approaches the six month of publication, it is doing well, about 50 hits per day on average and over 1,100 linked RSS Feeds, a pretty worthy accomplish for a half year old blog (which is my opinion and no one else’s).
But as most people, I would like to see it do much better. The last time I checked its ranking it was sitting on about 71% out of a possible 100% value score, and that aint too shabby. Something akin to a doting parent, this is my child, and I want to see it crawl, walk and then grow … So I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find that “thing that will make it excel, to make it unique in its neighborhood here on the world wide net..” I want it to stand out and shine. Most of these people who work hard at this, strive to make it the very best that they can make it, and they want to see their efforts increase, grow, become popular, whatever.
In the past few months, I have often made the trip over to the WordPress.com Global Dashboard and I have hit the “fastest growing segment” to see what it is that makes them the fastest growing blogs. Almost daily I peruse this medium and try to figure out what makes one blog extremely popular and the other to whither on the vine. Why some are a garden of richly flavored comments and others are the Death Valley of Wordsmiths.
I suppose to a certain extent it was somewhat educating for me at the same time. This latest development surely has been an eye opener for me.
Getting your readers to DO something on your blog is a powerful thing – this is why the average blogger is constantly trying to hit a home-run on several levels. This is (in my opinion) why they’re so obsessed with trying to find that one thing that makes it all come together.
(1) – The act of making a first comment on a blog can often be enough to make a lurking reader an active reader. I’ve noticed this before – people often feel shy about commenting but once they take the step to do so they open the flood gates. So you try to stimulate the comments section or make it easy.
(2) Personal contact with readers makes a real impact – this is something I’ve known for a long time but have had to re-learn many times. It can be difficult to interact with all of your blog’s readers but when you do it can really impact them and help them to become more loyal to your blog.
So that is why I head out for the WordPress.com Global Dashboard, figuring it was all there for me to discover and if necessary dissect. Now apparently I find that this is a total waste of time, and of course, that irritated me. This is why I once again dumped on them yesterday, and find myself so disenchanted with them this morning.
Where you stand on something, often depends on where you sit. Here you spend all this time and effort to try and find that “Holy Grail of bloggin” that thing that attracts the readership, and then you discover it is all a ruse, that is severely disappointing.
The Point?
An old worn out joke (which by the way could have been told much better) and one paltry post, does not constitute a fast moving blog in any way, shape, form or manner.
Not in the wildest stretch of the imagination.
It is frustrating to say the least, searching for something that you actually do not know what it might be? That ever so elusive plum that will allow you to achieve the goals that you have personally set for yourself and seem to always be just out of reach.
Then it is even more annoying to find out what you have been researching and studying is nothing but a cheap come on for a readership subscription to WordPress.com (“this is what your blog would look like if it were real or you had actually made a comment” – which should be followed with some kind of disclaimer … this is NOT a fast growing blog nor is it the genuine thing).
WordPress.com at the very least should provide a level playing field for its subscribers and/or readers and give them what it is that they advertise. Not some trumped up crap because someone was too lazy to do the necessary research (getting off their butt and actually finding a fast growing blog).
In my neck of the woods the farmers have an expression. “Two ways to buy oats, before they been through the horse, and after” …. and I am truly sorry folks ….. But this Fastest Growing blog on the net crap is definitely after.
You need to clean up your act.
A special thanks to Nick at Support who has been most helpful this past week, I appreciate it. He helped me out with my RSS Feeds, and they are now fixed, still only see one comment in the comment feed, but I guess I can live with that.
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