Posts
WHY?
The usual reasons:
1.) The Love has gone --
2.) The other party has grown into someone(thing) different.
Once we blogged for COMMUNITY
Now, we blog for
SEARCH ENGINES
Remember how thrilled you were when you got your first comments on your blog?
How you joined bloghops to meet others, posted their blog buttons on your sidebar?
How you emailed special blogging friends?
You got to know those friends from their comments and their newsy posts on their blogs.
Then, they started to DRIFT AWAY from your blog,
your received comments.
In the blogverse, it's gotten like that cliche in Western Movies:
It's quiet out there ... too quiet.
The community has dissipated to other outlets of SOCIAL MEDIA or other concerns.
Specifically to Facebook ...
where it is hard to get blog notice without paying extra for it ...
and not even then sometimes!
The demise of Google+ has relegated many of us to the shadows, forgotten in dim memories.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
Know that good writing is true writing.
Endure:
Do not be a weather-vane spinning crazily about, buffeted by the winds of the current fads.
Stay True to Ourselves.
Write posts that please us --
Seasons change, but we grow from surviving their storms.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
IS BLOGGING IN THE I.C.U.?
HAS BLOGGING GROWN AWAY FROM US?
DO WE CHANGE OR STAY THE COURSE?
Here Google pushed Google+, shutting down GFC so we'd use Google+ circles instead, and yet it didn't grow either.
ReplyDeleteI think blogging hit its peak around 2012-2013. It's waned, but I don't think it's dying. I'm still finding new blogging friends. I still appreciate the comments on my blog.
Blogging is not dying for sure, just evolving ... but in a more distant, cold manner to me.
DeleteYou are in a class by yourself, Alex, what with your IWSG juggernaut -- you will always garner new readers.
We little minnows in the internet sea are just lost in the swells. :-)
Thanks for this refreshing take on the state of blogging, Alex. I am of the 'old school' blogger club that wants to connect via blog reading and commenting plus sharing. I have zero understanding of the rapidly changing G+, SEO search engines nor do I enjoy facebook. I find myself less inclined to even open up my facebook page and less so to read the newsfeed. I wonder if there is something wrong with me. Maybe I'm not keeping up with the times? I agree with you though, that good content, written from the heart will always be more meaningful. Let's hope readers can find our content though. :)
ReplyDeleteI am like you, Lisa. I believe in the old-fashion concept of just being friendly and sharing.
DeleteTrying to distill blog success to cold SEO and other formulas just seems mechanistic and distant to me.
Here's to just writing entertaining, warm content until someone discovers a kindrid spirit. :-)
Ah, yes thank goodness there are some of us left. Sorry, Roland apparently I have re-named you Alex. ;)
DeleteRe-naming me Alex is a compliment! :-)
DeleteI think you nailed it, Roland, as bloggers get lazy (they admit it) and prefer to do a short post on social media's popularity forums: FB and Twitter. That requires no depth and little content other than 'look at me'. I do slow blogging, as Anne R. Allen calls it and it works at least to keep me blogging along with my other duties. Even with bloghops, few new readers join or even comment. People are tending to cluster together in groups and sometimes they don't move outside those groups. It's the human way. . .I'm not an early adopter and I decide for myself if certain forums are productive for me. I look at pageviews now and what countries outside my own are looking at my content. And for me, that has increased (but not to astronomical levels). It means someone is looking, reading or perhaps stumbling upon my blog. Of course I know those stats may not be that accurate, but I'll live with it.
ReplyDeleteLike you, if I am going to write a post, I want it to be meaningful, fun, and engaging. Life is too short to write cotton candy posts, right? :-)
DeleteI am glad you are getting international visits. I like to look at my globe on my sidebar to see how many countries have visited me. :-)
What an intriguing post title. I miss the heyday of author blogging and book blogging. It was a great community. But I still enjoy IWSG. I never liked Google Plus (it didn't have a user-friendly format in my opinion) and I'm pretty addicted to Facebook for connecting with friends around the world.
ReplyDeleteI try to hook browsers with a fun title to my posts. :-)
DeleteFB has gotten too mercenary and so few of my friends see most of my posts so I visit seldom. :-(
You and I remember the heyday of intimate blogging. I miss it, too. Sigh.
Facebook is so easy to use even computer illiterate can do it. I never did a blog because I still don't know how to do it. Facebook allows me to reach out as good as any blog. https://www.facebook.com/walter.knight.948
ReplyDeleteI'm just more selective in my blogging these days. And I only blog once a week. There are just too many other things I want to do and they don't require a computer. Thank heaven for that. As to Google+. . . I'm not a fan. I'd rather still with clunky old Blogger.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading your blog, Roland, so I hope you keep it up. As for mine -- I might continue to make an occasional posting, but generally I'm just so busy I don't have time to blog myself. Ah well.
ReplyDeleteYour reason is why so many have stopped blogging and gone to FB. But FB is just not right for fun posts. :-(
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