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No, this photo doesn’t have anything to do with this post, but heck – it’s seasonal!
So, in this earlier post, we talked about how blog-reading is evolving in a more visual, more bite-sized, more social-media-driven direction. I certainly don’t think this heralds the death of blogs – after all, what are all those links that get shared in these spaces?
But I do think that the way we use blogs to reach people is also evolving, and this post represents my emerging thoughts on this topic. Please don’t take this post as stuff you “should” be doing. I’d love to hear your ideas, and have some discussion about how we’re all coping with blogging and social media becoming more and more deeply intertwined.
Okay, so that said…
Image by against the tide, via Flickr
Letting Go of Subscribers?
When blogs and RSS readers arrived on the scene, we learned to revere the idea of “subscribers” – people who were committed to reading all of our posts. Subscribers represented our core audience, and our potential market. We tabulated our value by the number of subscribers we had.
But increasingly, I suspect that the subscriber is a vanishing animal. How many blogs do you currently subscribe to, and of those, how many are you actually making time to read regularly – and how “regularly” is that really? Do you read every single post of any blog you subscribe to?
Image by AndyWilson, via Flickr
I’m guessing that most of you have rather sheepish answers to these questions. And there’s nothing wrong with it! We are simply adapting to faster, more nimble, more flexible ways to read web content. We cannot hold ourselves to the same standards of blog-reading forever in a world that’s swirling with change.
If your subscriber numbers are declining, don’t take it personally. Instead, consider that your readers may be wanting to read your stuff in other ways.
…Which leads to my next idea:
![Daily Shoot 11.02.10 [Choices]](http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4015/5140406139_e952ffdc98_z.jpg)
Image by colemama, via Flickr
Being Available in More Than One Way
If people aren’t seeking to read every single post from any one blog anymore, what does this mean for bloggers? It means recognizing that your readers are reading their content in a lot of different places now – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, mobile apps, visual aggregators, and even email subscriptions.
I get this question all the time: “Should I be using [insert name of social media tool here]?” Usually, my answer is that nobody “has” to use anything, and that you should choose the tools you like using and have time to use. But increasingly, I’m wondering whether a blogger might want to set up at least as RSS feed presence in various social media venues, so people who do their blog reading there have a way to tune in.
Image by launceton_lad, via Flickr
I also used to say that if you’re going to use any social media tool, you have to actively participate there. But maybe you don’t. Maybe all you have to do is broadcast your content on all the disparate channels people use nowadays. That won’t get you a wide following on any single channel, but maybe it’ll reach a few people you would have lost otherwise.
As much as I despise Facebook, for example, it has proven beneficial to feed my blog over there for the people who want to read it. I do hear from people who are glad they can pick up the posts there instead of having to travel over to my blog.
I’m really conflicted about this idea, however, because it’s still frustrating to find my friends posting the exact same things on every social media channel. But perhaps the answer is to simply not follow everyone on every channel. Maybe we’re settling into smaller, platform-based cliques now.
…Which, yes, leads to yet another idea:
Image by johnkoetsier, via Flickr
A Thousand Points of Data
The problem, of course, with having your content displaying in many places is that you then have to watch many more data points to determine how many people you’re reaching.
For example, these days I’m watching my website traffic numbers, my RSS subscriber numbers, my blog comments, my Twitter mentions and retweets, my Facebook Likes, Shares, and Comments, plus my podcast feed subscribers and download numbers for each show. Good Golly, that takes a lot of time! And, it takes some effort to coalesce all that stuff into any coherent picture of how things are going.
Of course, sooner or later the web is likely to provide us with tools to do that coalescing for us, but right now, in a crazy disparate universe, growing an audience can mean tending to a lot of data.
Image by Krissy.Venosdale, via Flickr
Getting More Active About Getting Seen
Increasingly, growing an audience also means putting ourselves out there. We can’t just post the posts and sit back waiting for someone to notice. The craft community is full of aggregation websites, and these are places where large numbers of people (including all the people who curate content for those aggregation websites) go to see new craft.
I believe that these aggregation websites also feed an awful lot of social media link-sharing. And so, if if you want more people reading your best blog posts, then it pays to regularly submit those links to aggregation sites. Craftgawker and iShareCrafts have open submission forms. So do One Pretty Thing, CRAFT, CraftGossip, and many others.
(Incidentally, I think there’s a lot more to this whole “curation/aggregation” thing, but let me save that for another post.)
What are your thoughts? How is your approach to blogging changing these days? What tactics have worked in terms of bringing you more visibility?
“Sheepish” with that photo cracked me up. Thanks for another post full of smart, Diane! I definitely agree it’s going in too many directions now – I haven’t tried to keep up because I have long since reached my limit of available time for blogging. I really like that you are calling ‘boo’ on the time it takes to even keep track of so many points of media. Jeesh, if only there were three extra hours in the day, or as you say, the web would come up with something to make it all coalesce.
:-) I think that’s only a matter of time, Michelle! Clay Shirky has a great quote: “It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.” The people who give us easy-to-use, customizable filters will definitely win. Thanks so much for your comment!
I’ve been told that I need to be on Facebook too. But I also dislike the venue and feel that it’s so much more a personal network than a business one. (And I don’t use it much for personal besides). I wish Facebook created a blog reading module so that users could pull in their blogs without a blogger having to make a “presence” on FB.
Well, I’ve done something similar by just setting up a Page and feeding my blog there. It’s not ideal, but it delivers the content. There’s no way I’ll ever develop a presence there – the UI is just so convoluted, and I don’t believe the company feels in any way responsible for its users.
I do think that anyone who says we “need” to be on any platform is just misguided. There are no platforms where everyone is, and even on the platforms where lots of people are congregating, it takes tremendous work to get to a point where you’re reaching significant numbers of them. It really comes down to what we like using, where our people are, and how much available time we have.
…You’re such a perfect example of that! Look what amazing things you’ve accomplished on Flickr!
Thank You, your posts are always relevant & yes, I (pretty much) read every one! I scan through my Google Reader & see all the blogs that I’m subscribed to, then if it’s something that especially grabs my attention, I will click & go directly to the site. Wonder if these types of views are included in the subscriber & site view numbers?
I think I might be coming close to a “social-media” breaking point. It’s tough when you are trying to get followers to your business because you feel like to HAVE to be everywhere, all the time! I personally enjoy Pinterest & Facebook; less so Twitter. I think the best way to filter your social media filters is, if you think to yourself “Ugh, I gotta update *xyz*…. ugh…” it’s time to cut it!
HAHA! I love that qualifier! :-) It’ll be so interesting as more of these visual aggregators come online… it’ll just become more and more challenging to be on all of them. Ultimately, I think we’ll be forced to choose the very few where we’ll spend our engagement time, but then we might end up “broadcasting” to others. Or, some platforms will evolve specifically to deliver blog posts, while others will evolve specifically for conversation. Interesting times…. Thanks for your comment!
Such an interesting topic. There’s definitely a short list of blogs where I do read every single post, but usually it’s post titles that really draw me into something.
Images on Pinterest or links from blogs/sites I normally read are what lead me to new things. This is because the majority of my Facebook friends aren’t into the same things I am (I only ‘friend’ family and old friends), and I really only use Twitter to gather information and interact with other people in the editing field.
That said, I’m constantly adding to and purging my RSS subscriptions, but am realizing over time I have a rather long list of blogs that always seem to make the cut thanks to their consistent delivery of quality content. So I love Google Reader, but I wish it were more visual, so I could quickly see post titles AND pictures and thereby access things that catch my attention at that moment. Even better would be if a post were highlighted if it’s generating a lot of attention (comments, shares, tweets, etc.). So that means I’m hoping RSS feeds stick around! =)
I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Google Reader evolve in a more visual direction. Google is usually very aware of developments in how people read content. I’ve seen some references here and there that they’ve pulled much of their Google Reader team to other projects, so maybe this heralds something more visual on the horizon – maybe integrated with Google+! Wouldn’t that be nice?
Honestly, that would be the ideal! I definitely like being able to filter and sort the content I choose to subscribe to; having a separate click to see ‘suggested’ reading would also be nice.
I so agree! Maybe those are the algorhythms in development now – the ones that can predict what we’d like to see based on what we look at. Right now, those “You Might Also Like” displays in my Google Reader always point to the bigger blogs that I already know about. What if they could show me something that’s not on the general radar yet? THAT would be highly useful.
I think you are on to something there. I’ve noticed that my blogreading through readers become more and more something I neglect – and I catch up every once in a while(much like reading magazines, actually. Usually it’s something like – now I’ve finished my work, and I can read trhough my reader for half an hour). But I tend to read blog posts I come across via Twitter or Facebook more regularly. Like yours. When you post a link on Twitter, I’ll go have a look (if I’m on Twitter at that moment, of course) – and the same with many of my favourite sewing blogs.
Yes! You’re right – it really becomes this “of the moment” thing. I’ve learned that I need to post links to my new posts 2-3 times during the day, because I need to catch people when they’re on Twitter and one mention won’t do that.
…And I do that with my RSS reader, too. There are moments when I feel caught up with my work when I’ll dive in there for a nice read. But that’s not something that happens every week anymore. (Though I would LOVE to feel caught up more often.) :-)
I’m curious – how do you do that (post several times on twitter).. 48.7% of my costumers (at this moment, it varies a bit) are in the US, 10% in Australia and I’m here in a completely different time-zone. I was wondering if I should schedule my tweets (I have gathered that there are platforms such as hootsuite to do that), but it seems to take out the live-chat feel of Twitter – and I’m afraid it would become too spammy..
Believe me, I fear that, too! :-)
So, watching my Twitter feed, I noticed that it’s busiest between 8am and 1pm. That’s when most of my East-coast followers are active. From about 1-5pm, I have a better chance of reaching people closer to the West coast. Then, early evening hours I can reach people who work during the day and get on social media at night. And late at night, I’m reaching people overseas during their daytime hours. I don’t do all this posting every single day, because I agree – that starts feeling pretty spammy. But I do try to take advantage of all those “time zones” throughout the week.
With the podcast, for example, I can see clearly in my download numbers when I have and haven’t done these repeat Twitter mentions. Crazy, right?
Incidentally, HootSuite (http://www.hootsuite.com) is an awesome tool for pre-scheduling both Twitter and Facebook posts. They just launched an “auto-scheduler” that purports to schedule tweets at your peak times, but I have yet to get it to work for me.
Hi Diane, with the exception of CRAFT, I’ve never submitted to aggregators like “One Pretty Thing,” etc. Do you typically submit your blog posts to all of them hoping they’ll get picked up somewhere, or do you selectively choose when and where you submit to aggregators?
Thanks for the thoughtful post!
Amy
Good Question! To a large extent, it depends on the post. When I do a paid tutorial post for someone, for example, I submit it widely, so they’ll see as much traffic as I can possibly generate. When it’s something of mine, I’m less assiduous, for better or worse. :-) And I do pick and choose according to the post topic and how it fits with the content of these various sites.
Perhaps I’m old school, but I really love Google Reader. I read every post on the blogs I subscribe to there and I have long-standing relationships with many of those bloggers. I check my reader when I have time to sit down and read for a while and it’s a real pleasure for me.
I’ve found lots of great posts and articles to read via Twitter over the last two years, and every once in a long while I’ll end up subscribing to a blog after clicking through from Twitter, but overall I love the deep understanding I get and long-term development I see when I subscribe to a blog for many years.
If I find myself not reading posts from a particular blog on Google Reader I unsubscribe. I may check in from time to time, but I like having only those blogs that I’m really interested in there so that I know I’ll find wonderful nuggets of goodness every time I open it up.
My blog reading list, where I actually read more or less each post has, admittedly become shorter. But they are written by people that have become my friends. Not just my market/clients. My list of occasional/inspirational reading though, is pretty long. And I find myself adding & axing that list as I go. Quality of content, consistently frequent posting, and great images attract me. I use Google Reader mostly. And I would love to see Google go more visual as well. However, I find all the many social avenues we can walk down, so to speak, and be seen is overwhelming. There are just too many places…LOL… I refuse Facebook, but do enjoy Twitter. I definitely think that we’re all gathering in smaller, platform-based groups now and that that will likely continue. I notice myself that my style of posting is changing a bit, in that I’m focusing more on the overall visual aspect and writing less. I love to write, and I can write a looong post. But folks want short & sweet, because they’re hopping around on many platforms with so little time…So I find myself learning to adapt now to a new way of blogging and being out there!
My Mom and I have been talking about this lately, too. We’re both trying to write shorter and shorter posts, because longer ones (like, um, this one) just don’t get the readership they once did. It’s an unfortunate side effect of information overwhelm.
I’m taking an e-marketing class now and everything you speak of is totally relevant in todays Web. In my case I use google reader and Feedler on my iphone. If google reader was set up where you could see titles of posts like Feedler than it would be much easier for me to pick and choose what I have time to read. I now have very few blogs that I read all the time or check more than once a day. Others I binge on when I notice on how far behind I am on them. Some of my blogs post smaller updates on Facebook which makes me check that more too. As people become more connected through other social type Web sites I think it’ll become more important to figure out which of those your audience is hanging out at. Independent bloggers without tons of marketing knowledge or time need to figure out how to spend their time, you can’t cover all this data on your own. About the longer posts, I tend to read them when I have the time and brain space to read them. With google reader I can’t tell if it’s going to be an intense post with “committing” to it. I do enjoy these posts your doing.
Thanks, Meg. As a blogger, I can really see that lots of people are reading blogs similarly to how you are. It used to be that you’d put up a post and see immediate reaction. You’d have a particular topic focus on a particular day. Now, that reaction is diffused over a span of weeks. And posts I did last year and even earlier still regularly get comments from people who found them on aggregator sites.