Whew! In the name of keeping Belmont University blogs open for freely exchanged ideas/discussion, we accumulated roughly 20,000 spam comments and trackbacks... mostly on blogs that are what I shall politely call dormant. Today was the day for housekeeping...*bleh*.
Life-cycle of a blog
Allow me to walk around this dormant blog concept for a moment. Most of the time, the demand for a new blog here at the university comes with a level of urgency (plus an occasional name-dropping of some dean-level-or-above individual). Blog construction generally follows very shortly along with a round or two of blog basic training sessions. The first posts follow within a week or so... and then the pace tapers off to oblivion within 6 weeks. The questions follow shortly thereafter, "Why isn't anyone reading my blog?", "Can we do a launch so that we'll get more traffic?", "Why aren't my posts showing up in XYZ's aggregator?" And then, finally...dormancy and abandonment (insert bugler playing taps here)...'yet another blog statistic.
Rant
What is missing from the erroneous/mis-informed concept of if you build it (blog) they (visitors) will come measure of blog success, is the reality that successful blogging is an interactive experiment. Successful bloggers link to the posts of other bloggers and then post related commentary. Most successful bloggers read other blogs and have been known to leave comments on those blogs. Successful bloggers write stuff that is interesting to someone...and the more one's in that someone, the more likely that there will be repeat visitors. It is an experiment and not all experiments work...and success may get measured by something other than visitor counts (i.e. personal satisfaction, improved writing skills, time away from MIL, etc.). Successful blog ventures require consistency, perseverance, dedication, and commitment. Remove any one of those four qualities and you increase the likelihood of failure in your blogging experiment. Somehow, we manage to want the success and name recognition that a blog can bring, but fail to understand that there are no guarantees even with a lot or work./Rant
Read. Link. Write. Comment. Respond to those who comment...then, call yourself a blogger. Pass the offering plate later.
Personal Note
If my doctor is reading this: No, I have not been drinking coffee all day..really!