Things the brain ponders at 4 in the morning : Blog picking

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I’ve been blogging for over 5 years and I’m still mystified by blogger behavior (including my own).

Here are 3 things all of us do that can’t possibly be described as blogging etiquette.  It’s more along the lines of picking your nose and hoping no one is watching.

Willy Wonka Funny Quotes. QuotesGram

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Marathon Liking:  My inbox fills up with 20 messages in a row that say “Jane Doe-Popular thought your post was awesome!“ I look at the stack of mass notifications and ask myself, “How does one read a 2-page post in under 15 seconds?” 

Just as deflating is another naked truth:  There seems to be a disturbing correlation between the popularity of people who can like 20 of my posts in less than 3 minutes and their ability to have 10,000 followers in 2 years time.   

Wavering Followers:  I can ignore losing 2, gaining 3, losing 1, gaining 2, losing 4, gaining… well, you get the picture.  Every blogger understands this phenomenon. The way numbers move up and down reminds me of waves lapping onto a shore.  After a while, you ignore the rhythm of it.  But…losing 50?

I try hard not to look at the numbers, but just a month ago I was hit with the “lost-50-followers-in-one-day” tsunami. I know 20 of them were from my Twitter link, it meant the clean-up bots had taken me out as unfit to live in their cyberspace.  The other 30 must have been from a social media site recently deceased that I, and everyone else, had forgotten about. 

Drive-by Liking:  The longer you blog, the better you understand another hard truth; not everyone is going to find your blog interesting.  I feel terrible when someone likes my blog and I have to search theirs to find one thing I can honestly say I like. 

Whenever I receive notification that someone new has visited my blog and liked one post, a post that’s a year old, it’s like having a first date with someone you will never go out with again.   You try to find something nice to say, but the only thing that comes out of your mouth is a dreadfully delivered, “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

This, above all other behaviors, seems to be deeply ingrained in every blogger. 

I have to repeat a painful truth I’ve mentioned in posts past but still don’t want to learn:  The more time I spend on a post, the less likes it will receive.  I recently had over 50 likes on a post that took 10 minutes to write.  The masterpiece that took days to get “just right” received under 20.   

Bottom line:  Write your blog your way and — unless a crazed mob comes to your door with torches and pitchforks — don’t sweat the small stuff.  There are almost 8 billion people in the world and I can guarantee that at least 1000 of them are going to like your stuff.  It might take 10 years, but they’ll find you.  

 

 

© Joelle LeGendre (I try not to push buttons, so I rarely unfollow; unless you hate dogs, cats, and me.  Then I might think about it for a few years first.)

Category : humor
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