Photoessay #39 - Into the sky

I've been doing this bog now for about 5 weeks now. I've been sending all of this writing into the big blue sky. This image, taken by my husband, shows a montage of (rare) blue sky and clouds likely taken from our front yard. But you feel you can get lost in the vast space.

On May 24, I wrote about my ideas about my new blog

My initial hook is to write about pictures that I have or can have. Not about me but about the world around me. I'm hoping that these exercises will have unintended consequences, that writing every day will take me somewhere that I cannot yet see.

Develop a voice, gather insight, improve writing technique, something.

I've made over 50 entries now, at least one each day. I've found that I would really like an audience. I joke that, after my sister (who reads regularly), my readership drops off dramatically. Good friends and family look at it, under duress, but that's about it.

I've searched around on blogs, thinking a lot about what attracts me. People around my age writing about their own lives with insight. Pictures are good, especially as they illustrate their life. Clear writing, not a lot of specialized spellings. A few that I like include

4th Avenue Blues
Bula's Adventures
Life in Ashville
Ishikawa blog

A month into this, I recognize several main keys to readership

a. Viewers for your blog.

This can happen through direct referral (I put up a picture of the campout up on my blog, you GOTTA look at it), through blog referral (you comment on somebody's blog and they wonder who you are and look at your page) and blog-related searches (such as 'next blog' on the blogspot.com page)

So far, readers are not finding my blog. I have a page counter and there's little activity. 35 views in 7 days and most of them have been me.

b. Viewers being interested enough to read it.

There are lots of blogs that I skip over right away including
1. not in Engish
2. full of sex pictures
3. crafts blogs
4. organizational blogs (church youth)
5. manga/fantasy
6. political commentary
7. strictly photos

Many different constituencies out there. Even my looking at the page and moving on should register as a page view.

Who is my audience and will they read the entries? My hook was the picture, hope that they will enter and read.

Don't know if that's really happening because I don't have sufficient page views

c. Readers coming back

This is an activity that occurs over time. The author updates the blog with new entries. So, if I want to build a community, IF I had somebody reading this, I would want them to come back and see what's new. This means that subsequent entries should be frequent and high quality. Your readers will no longer check back if it's the same old blog. Bula's Adventures doesn't have regular updates but that's expected as they are driving across Africa. However I expect Andrew at Fourth Avenue Blues to update his story every day.

I hope in another month, I've gained a bit of audience. I'm more concerned about that then running out of pictures or experiences.

PS made the greatest mistake today. I'm writing marketing letters today to Trinity College, Dublin. Something caught my eye. Irish School of Economics. Kind of had a different slant, reconciliation, peace studies, etc. Wrote the letter. Amazing, I got a response from the head of the school. She writes:

We are the Irish School of Ecumenics

Oh, um, never mind. No wonder they had such a refreshing view