“Blogs to riches”

Our last reading of the quarter for Communications 460 (“Blogging, Media and Politics“), “Blogs to Riches” is an ironically sloppily written article by Clive Thompson. It addresses the blogosphere popularity pecking order. He categorizes blogs by “A, B and C Listers”. It seems that there’s just a few blogs on the A-list (Huffington Post, Daily Kos, BoingBoing, for example) who are not only popular with blog readers but also popularly linked to by other blogs. (I suppose I just made them more popular, eh?).

The key to becoming an A-lister, according to Thompson, consists of two major ingredients: choosing a sexy niche for your focus and posting often. Some savvy in self-promotion never hurts, either. While some bloggers like myself write and wonder if they’ll be discovered serendipitously by another blogger and thus get that boost that Thompson experienced when his work is linked to by BoingBoing, others are out there getting lots of posts written and sometimes begging for the A-listers to link to them.

Yeah, I have the same pipe dream of being “discovered”. In fact, as an experiment I’ve sometimes focused on issues that I think will get search engine traffic. Some have worked and some haven’t. Those that resulted in traffic are only countable in the dozens of visits so the term “worked” is relative. The most popular post I ever wrote resulted from a mention by a local journalist blogger at the Seattle Times. It wasn’t my intention in this instance to be seen by others but rather to try out live-blogging. I’ve never had the same level of interest in a single post since. Thus from my experience it really does matter when you get attention from bloggers with considerably more readers than you even if your secondary popularity lasts for only for a day or two.

Is that what blogging for me is really about? I don’t think so. I like to write and this blog gives me an opportunity to blather on about things I’m interested via with a style I like. The only costs that I incur are the time I put into a post.

Yet, it’s just that low barrier of cost to the average blogger that translates into lots of blogs and little quality out there. While I don’t think there should ever be obstacles to creating a website like a blog, there sure as hell should be obstacles in becoming a good or great blogger. I’m glad there’s a pecking order. It does take some time to find those B’s and C’s that address topics I really like.

My advice: If blogging is what you want to do, then get at it and do good stuff. Learn how to be savvy. Learn from other bloggers successes and mistakes. Why I don’t blog multiple times a day or week is due to time restrictions and a fear that frequent posting will just turn into drivel. Self-referencing drivel. Oh, wait.