Adam Luke

I have been informed that it is currently National Blog Posting Month. Although I don’t plan to post even nearly every day, I hope there will be an increased rate of posting this month. Plus, I’ve already missed two days, according to my timezone (GMT+10 represent!).

I have thought of various things I want to write about/show photos and pictures of, including one image post that will have had hours of work put into it. It will be a  surprise. Except for how it won’t be, as I’ve mentioned it on Twitter. But anyway!

Today, I shall be talking about my experiences with gaining readership over the past three months.

I don’t really know how to gain readers, actually. I don’t actively promote my blog anywhere. I post at Snark at least once every few days, and I comment on the odd blog entry here and there, both of which I get referrals from. Additionally, I receive some search engine referrals for phrases such as “into weird shit”¹, variations on “wisdom teeth” and “wisdom teeth extraction”, “top things we spend on“, and “Melbourne commissioned graffiti“.

As I’m happy to observe, my hits have increased month-by-month, partly thanks to those of you who are returning visitors and have subscribed to the feed. Below is a graph (graphed by the WordPress.com Stats plugin).

Part of the reason I only blog once every week or two is because my readership is still quite low, and I actually have faith in my blog entries, and am certain that they are interesting enough for people to want to read. Now I don’t know how many people reading this actually agree with that, but my theory is that the longer I keep a blog entry up, the more people who actually read it, rather than it getting “swept under the rug” due to my still-low readership.

Back in the day when I had my first domain, I briefly used a website called Blog Explosion, to increase my hits. I recently poked around to see if it still existed (it does). Although sceptical about how useful such a website actually is, I signed up to see if I’d gain any new readers. How the site works is basically this: you view a blog for a minute or so, and then move to another blog, and so on. Each time you visit a blog, you get credit, and the more credit you get, the more people who view your blog. For gaining hits, the site is useful. For gaining readers, it is utterly useless. Out of the 50 or so people who viewed my blog, not one of them engaged with the content (i.e., no-one clicked a link or read anything other than the main page). In fact, they may not have even read the front page. I know I didn’t do it for any of them! While I had their blogs open, I was off in other tabs doing other things. It’s not something I’ll continue with, as I’m more interested in people who want to read this, and don’t really care about.

1. Although the whole purpose of the post was about how I’m not into “weird shit”. Also, this was my first proper blog entry here! How nostalgic. Memories, like the corners of my mind…

As you can’t have not noticed, there are so many social media websites floating around these days! I have more than just a few accounts on such websites. A lot of you do, too. I feel as if I have to have them, too, as both real life and Internet friends alike have accounts everywhere, and I have a need to “keep up” with everyone. Although, most of my accounts are solely shared with Internet friends (and Internet strangers, for that matter). Below I talk about various social media websites I am apart of.

• LiveJournal (bertrand): I wasn’t sure whether this would be classified as social media, but Wikipedia said it was, and who am I to challenge the all-knowing free encylopaedia? Anyway, I’ve been on LiveJournal for over four years now. I used to blog more frequently, but that was quite a long time ago. I still blog every now and then, but this blog and Twitter are updated far more frequently. This blog, however, is much more formal. I’ve made many cool friends through LiveJournal and still enjoy reading their blogs every day.
• Twitter (cortices): I update this at least a few times a week. It was originally created with the intention of reading other people’s tweets (so many LJ friends have Twitter accounts. Remember how I mentioned I feel the need to “keep up”? Yeah.), but have found it quite enjoyable to write my own tweets! A lot of people seem to dislike Twitter, claiming that it is boring, however I have not found this to be the case at all. For me at least, there’s always something interesting to read. It does seem that replies need to be instant, however. As most of the people I follow are halfway across the world, so many tweets are posted while I sleep, fewer while I am awake, and even fewer while I am online, which poses a small problem.
• Tumblr (snowscout): This is another one which I created to keep up with friends on Twitter/LiveJournal. I felt so left out being without a “tumblelog”, haha.
• Facebook: I can only name a few friends who are sans a Facebook account. I was actually a bit late to the party, and have had mine for not long over a year. I don’t actually write many status updates or wall posts, though. Also, unfortunately, there is far too much chatspeak found there. Meanwhile, anything I write is fairly formal, with capital letters and all! Yes, capital letters are that rare on my news feed.
• Google Reader: A “like” feature was recently introduced to Google Reader, which adds a certain “social” aspect to it. I do, however, find the “like” feature quite useless when there is already an “add star” which I use to keep track of posts I enjoy. On that note, I also find the “like” function of Facebook useless. I’m not against the idea, but what they need to do is let you keep track of which posts, photos, etc., you liked, i.e., have a page where you can see them all and reminiscence, or something.
• Flickr (etherised.patient): I seldom add photos, and seldom visit the site. They do offer RSS feeds of your friends’ newly-uploaded photos, which is useful.
• Last.fm (lemony_fresh): Apart from the fact that you are unable to change terrible usernames (made mine back in 2004, and am now supposedly all mature and stuff and hate it!), last.fm is a very fun website. For those who don’t know, you just install the plugin/software and it records every track of music you play. Looking at years gone by in music, and comparing musical taste with friends is fun.