After five years of blogging I can lay claim to having become an expert on some areas of blogging and yet still remain a novice in others. Although I have to admit that part of me laughs as I type expert.
The source of my laughter comes from my skepticism and disdain for the hordes of people who claim to be experts in blogging, SEO, social media etc. That is not to say that experts do not exist, but that I do not believe that there are as many as lay claim to the title.
Now we could go on about why I feel this is so and the need for a consensus as to what skills/achievement you need, but that is far too dry for me right now. So let's get back to the topic of blogging tools.
When I refer to blogging tools I am speaking about the things that we need to blog effectively. That is a very broad topic and it covers many things such as blog platforms like Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad. It certainly covers writing tools/resources such as dictionaries and thesauruses.
But it also refers to some of the technology tools that we have access to, such as RSS Feeds, blogrolls, news aggregators and other devices that enhance the blogging experience.
I have recently added some new widgets that I hope will help this blog. They include the Outbrain links, Twitterfeed, Lijit and a couple of others. The goal/objective of these items is to do one thing:
Help increase and retain readership.
That is it, increase and retain readership. That is what I want to do. I want more readers to follow along and hopefully participate in an active comment section I am not going to quit if it doesn't happen. I have been blogging for five years without pay. You don't do it for that long without enjoying what you are doing. I like this.
But every now and then you need to reset the bar and give yourself something to shoot for. So that is what I am doing now, resetting the bar.
This leads me to my next question. What sort of blogging tools do you use and what do you think about them?
3 comments:
I enjoy a more minimalist approach for my blog. I don't want a gazillion things on my sidebar and widgets etc.. Maybe that would bumb up traffic. I hope it accomplishes that for those that uses these extra tools in any case.
Then again I only get about 150 visits to my blog a day including archives and my RSS feed (my blog is fully open in RSS) gets usually between 500 to 700 smacks a day. These are not super numbers, and clearly most people who stop to read never visit my actual site very often.. But I guess that fits in with my minimalist approach overall.
Saus,
That sounds like a decent chunk of people are reading your feed. Wonder how much crossover there is between the feed and those who hit the site.
All adds up over time.
yes ... I agree that blogging is a bit addictive. Thats doesn't stop being minimalistic and still earning money from useful promotions or activities... Don't LIMIT yourself, your posts have value and so could your earnings. Keep your eyes open and watch the major players. Look at boingboing.net and shoemoney...
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