Shooting at Bubbles

Isn’t blogging great?

You get to write whatever you feel like and publish it to the web where everyone can come rushing to read all your greatest and latest thoughts. You relish in the fact that your words spread far beyond your own little corner because people think what you have to say is so mind-boggling great that they just have to share them with everyone. You pinch yourself constantly thinking that your popularity must be a dream.

Well pinch a little harder because chances are it is a dream. A nice comfortable delusional dream that keeps you hoping that one day you will break through the closed circle that the blogging world has become.

Now you will find all kinds of suggestions out there about how you can connive, trick or otherwise SEO your way into that inner circle but for the most part they are a bunch of crap that gets constantly regurgitated by blogs more popular than you in order to keep their pageviews pulling in the bucks.

This post isn’t one of those. In fact it is a post about the things that you can do that will forever keep you in the minor leagues of blogging. Hopefully these points will help you achieve your dreams of blogging mediocrity – you can thank me later.

Use the nifty and newest blog magazine style theme.

It is easy to get sucked into thinking that you need to use the newest theme style like the red hot magazine style that is really popular right now. After all it’s new and people like new looks right?

No.

Take a look around. Is Mashable using that style? Or how about TechCrunch? Or even my paying gig – The Inquisitr?

In fact they all use a sort of mash-up of the traditional style blog format with hints of a magazine style. The reason is that people don’t really like change especially if you started out with a traditional style like I did with my WinExtra blog.

Around February/March of 2009 when everything I wrote was on WinExtra I decided to try and bring a more modern look to the blog and switched to a really nice magazine style theme. At this point WinExtra was doing extremely well visitor wise with March being a record month of just shy of 20,000 uniques so I figured switching themes would make the site even more attractive.

Wrong.

April saw a slight dip and then in May came the crash and when I say crash I mean bottom out WTF happened type of crash. My uniques for the month of May ended up being just under 5,000. Talk about a come down.

The other reason that something like a magazine style, as cool as they might be, won’t work for anyone but the top-tier blogs, and even they would think long and hard about it, is because you most likely won’t generate enough content as a single blogger. You might like to think so but in reality just add that thought to your dream bucket.

Get a brainwave to split your blog into two blogs

One of the problems I always had with WinExtra was that it served two masters. Primarily the blog was meant to be about Windows and Microsoft but as I began blogging more I ended up writing as much about Social Media and Web 2.0 as I was about Windows. This had a side effect of turning of current, and potential readers, who had come for the Windows and Microsoft stuff.

So in my brilliance I decided that since I was already hugging the ground after the magazine theme debacle it couldn’t hurt to split my social media and web 2.0 stuff off to its own blog and after a period of time relaunch WinExtra under its original intent.

It was under these conditions that this blog, Shooting at Bubbles, was born – which you can read more fully here – and while I don’t regret for a moment the splitting of the blog into two separate entities it hasn’t been without its pain or frustrations.

The thing is that for anyone other than top tier bloggers doing something like this is a brain dead move. Bloggers like Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Chris Brogan or even a brand like TechCrunch can do this and succeed because they already have the huge audience who will literally follow where they lead. For bloggers like you and me though – dumb idea.

So when you setup your blog and begin writing to change the world think seriously about your subject parameters. Are you covering too much? Will you be able to maintain a broad range of subjects without going nuts?

I can post whenever I want and people will rush to read my stuff.

Ya.

Okay. That’ll work well. Not.

Look I write a lot and have been doing so for going on six years now and for the most part – other than my writing at The Inquisitr I have held that same belief. Like who really cares if I am posting at 2AM EST they’ll still come and read it right?

No they won’t. At least the majority of people won’t. Sure your few die-hard followers will or at least they’ll read it first thing in the morning in their feed reader. The rest – they couldn’t careless – they’re asleep.

The fact is that it doesn’t matter where you are in the world when it comes to blogging; and especially tech blogging, there is only one timezone that counts and that is the Pacific Timezone. Not only that but if you want the most bang for the buck you need to post between 9AM and 8PM Monday to Friday – anything other than that and you are automatically relegated to the hinterland of I’ll read that when I get a chance – which for the most part will never come.

Content is great but content that no-one will read because it didn’t show up in prime time is nothing more then fodder for the Long Tail, no matter how good it is.

If I link to as many of the big names as possible I’ll get all kinds of traffic

BTDT and as nice as it is to think that by linking to the words written by people you respect up there at the top of the ladder times have changed and the power of the link has diminished over the last few years. It was the case at one time that by writing about something that Robert Scoble or other big names had written about and linking to them you could expect to see some nice traffic. Hell chances were you might even have a visit from the originating author themselves.

Today though the link economy has for the most part flat-lined from abuse and because an increasing number of the big sites deep linking to themselves rather than linking out. As the blogging world turns we are having to depend on our own abilities to write content that is beyond regurgitation – which is a good thing – and less on the ability of gaining any attention from the big names in the blogging world in order to raise our own visibility.

This doesn’t mean that if the opportunity arises whether it be because some-one gave you an idea to riff on or said something that really needs to be responded to that you shouldn’t link. Gawd no by all means link but don’t expect to see any real benefits from doing so. Also if you do decide to link make sure you do so early enough so that you don’t get buried in the comment threads on that blog post you linked to because just as your great content can get buried in the long tail so can your linkbacks.

I can provide a contrasting viewpoint and people will want to read it.

ROFLMAO.

Wait … wait .. wait while I pick myself up of of the floor.

Whew.

Listen I have been doing that for the better part of two years here at Shooting at Bubbles and even longer at other places. Hell that is one of the reasons why I named this blog what I did because I believe that there needs to be a counter balancing point of view to all that warm and fuzzy hype that surrounds Social Media and Web 2.0 which I like to think I do a pretty good job of.

The problem is that people don’t want to hear it.

They don’t want their newest shiny object to be poked at – to be dirtied with anything but kool-aid powder. Don Quixote might have been famous for tilting at windmills but when it comes to the tech blogosphere tilting at anything will get you pretty well ignored.

I just wrote the greatest post ever so everyone is going to come running

Uh.No.

Look, you aren’t Michael Arrington and nor are you a Robert Scoble or Chris Brogan. Neither are you Seth Godin or any number of other top-tier bloggers who have dominated the tech blogosphere for the longest time. So no matter how big your delusions of grandeur are you aren’t going to be able to retire anytime soon based on your great content.

That doesn’t mean that your content isn’t great. Hell it could be the Great Gatsby of the blogging world but don’t think that the moment you hit publish that Digg is going to go nuts over it or that everyone is going to Stumble it. Chances are it will lie fallow with only your few dedicated readers being touched by your words and thoughts and you know what – be happy with that.

Growth comes with time. At one point the common thought was that after six months to a year you would achieve some level of success and popularity. That was then this is now and in today’s blogging world you can struggle along for years and still not get anywhere – that is the new reality of blogging.

In the end you have to realize that these days you truly are writing for one person – yourself. Anything else my friend is a bonus. So as you look at your dismal uniques and dwindling comments try and remember that it’s not you, it’s not your content.

The blogging world has changed so don’t take it personal just keep on writing – if only for yourself – because every idea .. every thought … that gets seeded to the Web is important. Just don’t expect fame and fortune to come knocking.