With the real reason for blogging having come and gone, why continue to blog?
With my real estate blog was no longer needed, I didn't post to it as much as I previously did, but I still wanted to feed it with info about the industry itself and I was just waiting for the day my real estate license would expire then I would not technically be held to the ethics that NAR claims to uphold for it's realtors. From my experience, a statement an associate made recently explains it all: "It's gotten more "sharky" since the market took a turn. One organization saying it holds it's members to ethics is a tenuous leash at best, IMHO.
At this time, my computer blog started to pick up as every now and then I'd post something rather relevant to certain groups of computer users who'd swarm my site, but even though I liked passing on information, sometimes I had a tough go at pushing myself to post. Let's keep in mind that these two blogs stemmed from my past careers, and down the road, that's an important facet that I will need to consider. I just didn't know it then.
A few different things caught my eye that helped me see the underpinnings of blogging and why I should consider posting to my own blogs which would help me continue to share my experiences and insight from news and tidbits I'd come across.
Out in the blog-o-sphere, people were making money and developing careers while they demonstrated their abilities doing stuff they liked. But could it be that easy? Set up some ad programs and post away? Well, no it's not, but one has to try, right? There's approximately 100 million blogs out there. How the heck am I gonna blog and get noticed? Who knows, but success can be had.
Of all the bloggers out there, there are four that have been inspirational to me, and I "work" for one of them now and that's pretty cool to me. But I'm getting ahead of myself now, as I did feel inspired to try blogging because of these authors so forward I moved.
I maintained my real estate and computer blogs and decided to branch out in other fields that inspired me to see how they'd take off, if they could and in the meantime, employ a few advertising programs to see where that can go. I did a lot of reading on how to get my blog noticed, how to create a network of associations, more on the marketing of blogs, and developing a readership.
Curious and Tedious Idea of a Marketing Test
What I decided to do was go off in several directions at once, more as a marketing test, to see which material got the most attention, retains the most readers, is the most fun to work with.
The one thing I didn't realize at the time was just how much work a single blog could require of a person who's serious about the success of
Those 2 points are important distinctions. You can make your own blog successful, then yourself, or you can make yourself popular, bringing readership to your blog. Before I learned that, I looked at the blog-o-sphere and decided to blog about what I like, what I think is popular and hover over my analytics numbers to see how it all panned out.
What Did I Decide to Market Test?
My first inclination was to blog about things I already work on, what I like, and a test! The websites and blogs that at the peak of my nutty experiment were:
My marketing experiment Explodes in my Face
I'm going to start with my end message: Working on 17 venues of information is not good for the quality of your content, your health or your family life.
But enough about the stress, I'll be getting into the details of my journey, research, and still in transition findings about this whole mess as I continue my series on The Challenges of Blogging.
Previous Chapter: part one. Next Chapter: part three
With my real estate blog was no longer needed, I didn't post to it as much as I previously did, but I still wanted to feed it with info about the industry itself and I was just waiting for the day my real estate license would expire then I would not technically be held to the ethics that NAR claims to uphold for it's realtors. From my experience, a statement an associate made recently explains it all: "It's gotten more "sharky" since the market took a turn. One organization saying it holds it's members to ethics is a tenuous leash at best, IMHO.
At this time, my computer blog started to pick up as every now and then I'd post something rather relevant to certain groups of computer users who'd swarm my site, but even though I liked passing on information, sometimes I had a tough go at pushing myself to post. Let's keep in mind that these two blogs stemmed from my past careers, and down the road, that's an important facet that I will need to consider. I just didn't know it then.
A few different things caught my eye that helped me see the underpinnings of blogging and why I should consider posting to my own blogs which would help me continue to share my experiences and insight from news and tidbits I'd come across.
Out in the blog-o-sphere, people were making money and developing careers while they demonstrated their abilities doing stuff they liked. But could it be that easy? Set up some ad programs and post away? Well, no it's not, but one has to try, right? There's approximately 100 million blogs out there. How the heck am I gonna blog and get noticed? Who knows, but success can be had.
Of all the bloggers out there, there are four that have been inspirational to me, and I "work" for one of them now and that's pretty cool to me. But I'm getting ahead of myself now, as I did feel inspired to try blogging because of these authors so forward I moved.
I maintained my real estate and computer blogs and decided to branch out in other fields that inspired me to see how they'd take off, if they could and in the meantime, employ a few advertising programs to see where that can go. I did a lot of reading on how to get my blog noticed, how to create a network of associations, more on the marketing of blogs, and developing a readership.
Curious and Tedious Idea of a Marketing Test
What I decided to do was go off in several directions at once, more as a marketing test, to see which material got the most attention, retains the most readers, is the most fun to work with.
The one thing I didn't realize at the time was just how much work a single blog could require of a person who's serious about the success of
A: Their blog, or
B: Themselves.
Those 2 points are important distinctions. You can make your own blog successful, then yourself, or you can make yourself popular, bringing readership to your blog. Before I learned that, I looked at the blog-o-sphere and decided to blog about what I like, what I think is popular and hover over my analytics numbers to see how it all panned out.
What Did I Decide to Market Test?
My first inclination was to blog about things I already work on, what I like, and a test! The websites and blogs that at the peak of my nutty experiment were:
Websites:
From the above sites I branched out into blogging about:
And I am "working" for blogs about
- A bowling alley website,
- My own, 'used to be' real estate website,
- Another website of my own that had no identity,
- An associates' personal website,
- Another associates inventory website,
From the above sites I branched out into blogging about:
- Hollywood Gossip,
- Movie and TV Opinions,
- NASCAR,
- NASCAR Race Recaps,
- Computer Shortcuts and Know How,
- Consumer Awareness,
- A Picture Blog
And I am "working" for blogs about
- A specific entertainment personality,
- NASCAR,
- Movie Reviews
- Sirius Satellite Radio.
- Freelance Editor about Entertainment and NASCAR
My marketing experiment Explodes in my Face
I'm going to start with my end message: Working on 17 venues of information is not good for the quality of your content, your health or your family life.
But enough about the stress, I'll be getting into the details of my journey, research, and still in transition findings about this whole mess as I continue my series on The Challenges of Blogging.
Previous Chapter: part one. Next Chapter: part three
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