“I have the New York Daily News to thank for the jeans controversy.” – Calvin Klein
As I have been “blogging” for awhile now, I have taken some time here and there to read up on it. It has become its own industry for generating income, ideas, etc. You’ve probably even noticed in some of your searches you get directed to a site that has nothing helpful really, just ads. So annoying.
When I look for information to help me do this better, often it is talking about “driving” visitors into your site, increasing traffic, garnering ads, and then contacting others to be a “guest blogger” on their site. While all that is indeed interesting, I didn’t do this to drive in visitors, make money, or other such things. I did want to make sure that folks could find me of course, and sometimes that means you have to do some of the “other stuff”. Sigh… A bit like doing art. You just want to do the creative stuff, but in order to be able to keep doing it, you need some income from it and to get that, people have to know about it, and to do that you have to delve into the business/marketing/promotion side of things, which many artists really hate. Me included.
One of the things a guru blogger I subscribe to says you need to do is CREATE CONTROVERSY! He claims, and probably correctly, that when you create controversy it will drive readers in to comment. So essentially, much like our media are “chaos merchants” (a phrase I stole from another), create controversy and mayhem to get people riled up enough that they tell others, visit, and then the coveted final product, leave comments. Comments are an indication of participation. Large participation garners advertisers.
Bloggers are often perplexed by visitors not leaving comments, yet they know they have many visitors if they use a site counter. I too was perplexed early on by this phenomenon and asked a few of my long time blogger friends. They said it was common, nothing unusual. Then if you go over to one of my favorite bloggers, The Pioneer Woman, she rarely gets less than 200 comments on any post! And she posts multiple posts a day!
Anyway, as I was reading this bit about creating controversy I thought, that’s sad. I don’t want to do that, that’s not my focus. Not too mention, I’m writing about cancer and we have enough difficulties without me saying nasty, mean, controversial stuff and getting you guys all whipped up and angry. Why would I do that? I think that is the LAST THING WE NEED! Good grief.
Pioneer Woman doesn’t do it either, so I don’t think it is at all necessary, at least not for my type of blog. I think it has to go back to why I started blogging or why Rhee Drummond started blogging about her life on the prairie. It wasn’t to create an industry or become a money making venture. It was something to fill our time, help others, bring pleasure, information, or some such thing. It was personal, which by the way, is what blogs were in their earliest days. A Web Log = blog. An online diary. Of course it has morphed and morphed and morphed into many more things and uses.
By the way, Rhee has one of the best “tips on blogging” I have enjoyed. If you are blogging or decide to give it a try, I highly recommend you review her tips. They are very good.
So while I may write about a controversy in our particular genre of cancer and/or Myeloma, I won’t be the one generating it. At least I hope I won’t! You never know, I could do something stupid! And if I do, I hope I get a “get out of jail free card.” 🙂
I admit freely that I like getting comments. Only because it is a way that lets me know that folks are getting something out of what I’m writing about, that its helpful, or even better they add to it with great ideas and successes they have had. Feedback is important, but again, its not why I started this or why I do it. Speaking of which, while I was writing this blog post I turned the site counter odometer on 90,000 visitors! Wow. I am truly humbled.
