The heart of a blog is its followers. A blog strives and survives because of its followers and the more followers a blogger can get, the more prompted he or she will be to write. Blogging is essentially the act of writing for an audience. Most people blog because they want other people to read what they’ve said. I don’t think that any blogger can truthfully say that they just blog for the sake of blogging. If that were true, they wouldn’t have to put their writing into a public forum like the internet where anyone can see it. They want people to read it and to gain approval of their writing or artistic abilities from their peers.
Hence, bloggers gain followers by writing about a common interest or subject which many people can relate to. Here in lies the problem with my blog; here is the answer to why I only have six followers: No one can identify a common interest in this bile that I’m writing. But, let me tell you, it is hard writing for an audience, especially when you have no idea what you’re writing about. You want to keep everyone entertained and wanting to read more (what a burden, huh?)
So, it was not until recently that I decided that I needed to get more followers for my blog than the dedicated four that I had at the beginning of September. My blog is so sad that my own mother won’t even follow me and vaguely realizes its existence. You know how your mom is always supposed to be an unbiased, guaranteed fan/ follower of everything you do? I don’t even have that. So, you know I’m in a low ground of sorrow. So, to fix this ‘following’ problem, I enlisted the help of the internet. I asked the internet: How do I get followers on a blog?
The internet said:
1.Pimp Yourself Out to your friends- I recently got two new roommates. One of the first conversations that we had was about adding each other as friends on Facebook. I noticed that they each have a blog listed on Facebook, so I let them know about mine. After this conversation, I started telling people at work about my blog and at RS meetings. One day, someone will follow . . .
2.Work That Social Networking site- I put my blog url in that little “about me” box on Facebook. A lot of people even put that they have a new blog post as their status. I even got so desperate as to Tweet on twitter “Someone follow my blog, please : (“ that got me one more follower, thanks Jims
3.Barter and Trade- I’ve had to hold myself back from saying to a lot of people “The only way I’ll follow your blog is if you follow mine :p” I think that would be effective in getting followers, put a little pressure, you know?
4.Read Other People’s blogs- Apparently, some people with tons of followers have them because they read and follow other people’s blogs who they don’t even know. So, I started to do the same.
5.Make yourself searchable- So if I put something like WWE and talked about John Cena, or if I wrote about how much I love Kim Kardashian, someone is bound to look them up on Google and possibly find my blog and read.
I’ve been experimenting with this for like a week, but I did get another follower. Who knows? Only time will tell. My ultimate dream is to have 10 followers! : )
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
The URL
So, after I picked out the lovely name for this blog, Gray Area, Blogger asked me to create a URL so that my friends and other readers could find it. I think in the suggestion box they say something on the lines of “pick something that is identifiable.” Well, being the complicated person that I am, I decided that I could not have a blah name like ACL0888.blogspot.com or itsangelasblog.blogspot.com as a name for a blog. And even if I had decided to pick one of these urls, I’m sure that somebody else out there already claimed them as their own.
A lot of people blog. Apparently, in 2009 there were 126 million blogs on the internet! That is crazy . . . What’s even more crazy is that there are actually websites like blogpulse.com that actually record the statistics of how many blogs there are on the internet. Blogpulse.com even picks the top 40 blogs based off of links of other bloggers. I did not realize how much this phenomenon had grown in recent years.
I vaguely remember hearing about someone writing a blog while I was in middle school, but I didn’t think much of it. Back then AOL’s IM was the internet craze, and now we have blogging, and facebook, and twitter, and all that social networking stuff. So, with my aversion to technology, also came my ignorance about the increase of the blogging world. It has increased so much that when I tried to give my blog the URL grayarea.blogspot.com that it had of course already been taken.
Upon discovering this, I then tried different variations: grayarea0888.blogpost.com (TAKEN), thegrayarea.blogspot.com (TAKEN), thegrayarea1234.blogspot.com (TAKEN), thegrayareamass. blogspot.com (TAKEN), grayareacentralstation.blogspot.com (TAKEN). I may be exaggerating this a little, but you get what I went through? It was at this moment that I came up with a ridiculous solution. I knew that I wanted grayarea in the url, so I decided to make a url using my brother’s birthday as the numbers.
I was quickly told by my friends that no one would ever be able to remember, let alone find my blog with that url. So, I came up with the next best option, graysector.blogspot.com. It’s kind of similar to Gray Area, right? But the fact is, that still no one can remember my url anyway . . .
A lot of people blog. Apparently, in 2009 there were 126 million blogs on the internet! That is crazy . . . What’s even more crazy is that there are actually websites like blogpulse.com that actually record the statistics of how many blogs there are on the internet. Blogpulse.com even picks the top 40 blogs based off of links of other bloggers. I did not realize how much this phenomenon had grown in recent years.
I vaguely remember hearing about someone writing a blog while I was in middle school, but I didn’t think much of it. Back then AOL’s IM was the internet craze, and now we have blogging, and facebook, and twitter, and all that social networking stuff. So, with my aversion to technology, also came my ignorance about the increase of the blogging world. It has increased so much that when I tried to give my blog the URL grayarea.blogspot.com that it had of course already been taken.
Upon discovering this, I then tried different variations: grayarea0888.blogpost.com (TAKEN), thegrayarea.blogspot.com (TAKEN), thegrayarea1234.blogspot.com (TAKEN), thegrayareamass. blogspot.com (TAKEN), grayareacentralstation.blogspot.com (TAKEN). I may be exaggerating this a little, but you get what I went through? It was at this moment that I came up with a ridiculous solution. I knew that I wanted grayarea in the url, so I decided to make a url using my brother’s birthday as the numbers.
I was quickly told by my friends that no one would ever be able to remember, let alone find my blog with that url. So, I came up with the next best option, graysector.blogspot.com. It’s kind of similar to Gray Area, right? But the fact is, that still no one can remember my url anyway . . .
Saturday, September 4, 2010
HTML?!?
Well, if there is one thing that these past four months have taught me, it’s that I am not a blogger . . . I already had my suspicions of this confirmed when I started the blog and began posting on it somewhat faithfully. The truth of the matter is that I had given up on this blog . . . I had given up on the Gray Area and blogging in general. Ouch . . . me writing that last sentence hurts even worse than voicing it to the four people that actual read my post. But, when I remember the exact night that I decided to give up, I can’t blame myself for throwing in the towel. When I think of that night, feelings of anger and frustration still remain.
Now, I remember what made me give up and want to throw my Netbook across the room—HTML. At this time, I would like to call your attention to the wallpaper and header of this blog. I would like to apologize right now if you are feeling slightly claustrophobic. You may also be experiencing feelings of nausea just as the Milky Way did when it vomited on this page. But, I really can explain what happened. That fateful night was the same night I found the star wallpaper. In the moment that I discovered it, I was so so happy because I really really really like stars (no joke).
I had already set up my blog several times before finding this wallpaper and I chose to use this artsy picture of a man standing in shadow/nothingness as a “cute” metaphor for the Gray Area theme. But, even though I found the shadow man picture, he just wasn’t right for my blog. I was always looking for a way to change it. However, when I found the star background I could not figure out how to get rid of the man for the life of me! I spent like an hour trying to figure it out and then I had the brilliant idea to go into the HTML, read the code, and fix the mistake.
I figured “how hard is it to read HTML?” At my job that past week, my supervisor sat in our staff meeting explaining to us all how to write in and read HTML. It looked easy enough when he showed us all the stuff like this
But really? What the heck does that mean? In order to solve the problem on my blog, I went to my internet source for everything, Google. I found that I was not the only person who could not figure out how to get a picture out of the header on blogger. The best response that I saw on Ask.com or something was “go into the display settings and look at the HTML. Then look for something in it that looks like it would be a picture.” How am I supposed to know what looks like it could be a picture out of all of that?So, I discovered that if I want to blog, I better get to work learning some HTML. This scared me because of my track record with technology. But, if I want to become a dedicated blogger, or at least try to be, I better start studying up on my HTML. Until then, can anyone help me solve my problem?
Now, I remember what made me give up and want to throw my Netbook across the room—HTML. At this time, I would like to call your attention to the wallpaper and header of this blog. I would like to apologize right now if you are feeling slightly claustrophobic. You may also be experiencing feelings of nausea just as the Milky Way did when it vomited on this page. But, I really can explain what happened. That fateful night was the same night I found the star wallpaper. In the moment that I discovered it, I was so so happy because I really really really like stars (no joke).
I had already set up my blog several times before finding this wallpaper and I chose to use this artsy picture of a man standing in shadow/nothingness as a “cute” metaphor for the Gray Area theme. But, even though I found the shadow man picture, he just wasn’t right for my blog. I was always looking for a way to change it. However, when I found the star background I could not figure out how to get rid of the man for the life of me! I spent like an hour trying to figure it out and then I had the brilliant idea to go into the HTML, read the code, and fix the mistake.
I figured “how hard is it to read HTML?” At my job that past week, my supervisor sat in our staff meeting explaining to us all how to write in and read HTML. It looked easy enough when he showed us all the stuff like this
But really? What the heck does that mean? In order to solve the problem on my blog, I went to my internet source for everything, Google. I found that I was not the only person who could not figure out how to get a picture out of the header on blogger. The best response that I saw on Ask.com or something was “go into the display settings and look at the HTML. Then look for something in it that looks like it would be a picture.” How am I supposed to know what looks like it could be a picture out of all of that?So, I discovered that if I want to blog, I better get to work learning some HTML. This scared me because of my track record with technology. But, if I want to become a dedicated blogger, or at least try to be, I better start studying up on my HTML. Until then, can anyone help me solve my problem?
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