Tanis Miller, The Redneck Mommy
Related articles
NaBloPoMo
If you are a regular follower – are there any of you guys left? – you might have noticed that I changed the tone of my writing towards the end of August. I got the idea that I wanted to grow my readership and I read a bunch of articles full of advice on how to maximize your blog’s popularity. Most of them featured a fairly simple and straightforward strategy: appeal to the widest audience possible. And write tutorials. And add a lot of photos. And host Blog Hops.
As you might imagine, none of that advice is particularly applicable to a dead baby blog.
So, I did what anybody obsessed with the numbers would do. I stopped writing about anything that has any meaning to me, and I started writing about what I thought would be popular with readers.
Not the best choice I have ever made. As it turns out, people were far more engaged and interested in my writing when I was writing from the heart. I lost almost all my followers and those that stayed stopped commenting.
It was pretty disheartening.
And then, I went to BlissDom Canada in Toronto the weekend before last.
While I was there, I met my Blog Idol – Tanis, The Redneck Mommy. She was leading one of the round tables. Among the many insights she shared with us was one tip that really applied to my situation: Write what you are passionate about; stop worrying about pleasing your hypothetical audience. After hearing that, and letting it sit, I realized that I had been suffering from self-inflicted blogger’s amnesia laryngitis – you know, I lost my voice.
["amnesia," seriously? I am so very ashamed of myself right now. - ErinM November 13, 2012]
And now that I have found my voice again, there are plenty of things that I want to write about, but I haven’t been in the right frame of mind.
Until now.
I’m going to try my hand at NaBloPoMo in November.
That’s one meaningful post every day for an entire month.
And THIS is one day down, 29 to go.
Life of K
Good for you Erin! Good luck this month. I’m doing it too but I’m okay with still doing my Wordless Wednesday posts and the odd fluff.
ErinM
I think what’s important is that you are posting content that you are proud of and stand behind, as opposed to content that might have mass appeal but in which you are not particularly invested.
Linda
Happy first day of NaBloPoMo!
Lara
I did it last year and it was an amazing exercise. I’m not committing to it again this year yet. But I did post a post today that has been in draft and unfinished for awhile
Lundie
Hey there! Nice to meet you! I decided to peek at #NaBloPoMo on twitter and saw your link. I’ve been an on and off blogger for several years now and am just coming out of a dry season. Thank you for reminding me why I write…to get my passion out where I can see it and act on it!