Michele of A Small Victory has a useful post on blogging. I especially like her suggestions on e-mail from readers (not that I get all that much).
I especially like her statements regarding the fact that blogs aren’t newspaper–I do get some of the “Why aren’t you covering X!” mail and comments. Simple answer: “I didn’t want to for any number of 100 or more reasons, but no, it is not a tacit admission that I support X and/or am trying to hide it.”
My own .02 cents on the subject of why people may or may not link to a post: what one thinks is a brilliant or interesting post may not be thought to be so by anyone beyond yourself. I have written posts (like this one from last Sunday) and then think “someone will probably link to this one, or at least comment on it” and then I get nothing. Sometimes an utter throw-away post gets some attention (this one that got three links and a decent amount of traffic) or a normal post generates a lot of traffic (like my Moore post yesterday) that I by no means expected
In short: never expect that a particular post will receive any notice. Just write what you find interesting and then find polite ways of generating attention for your site.
Ain’t nothing you can do to guarantee success.
And James is right: the best thing you can do is go back in time and start before there was so much competition.
Hat tip: OTB
May 6th, 2024 at 4:01 pm
What’s your policy on emails with post links to others blogs? It seems far more bloggers (like Michele) are amenable to receiving things like that, if done in a respectful manner, than I had thought.
May 6th, 2024 at 4:05 pm
I don’t mind receiving such e-mails. As long the e-mailer doesn’t expect that I will post the material–or doesn’t get offended if I don’t respond.
on balance I like such e-mails, because it often alerts me to stuff I was otherwise unaware of.
May 6th, 2024 at 7:03 pm
Cool. I’ll keep that in mind