Blogging is all about building relationships, isn’t it? We’ve heard this again and again that one of the crucial techniques to building relationships online, in the blogging world is to participate in discussions on other blogs via commenting. After all we can only read the words written on the screens, no one will know who is reading who, unless you write on other people’s blogs or they write on yours, right? So, as an ongoing effort to make it a habit to learn about other blogs, and the people behind them, I mentioned in one of my previous articles that I am going to find new blogs and try to contribute to the on-going discussions. It is difficult sometimes because it almost feels like you are crossing into someone else’s territory but it is not impossible. I am also finding that its a bit easier this month because I know a number of people are participating in Problogger’s month long project so I have a feeling this time around people are going to be a bit more accepting of newcomers and if we persistently do this for the length of the project, by the end of the month we will have discovered some cool blogs and gotten to know some creative bloggers.
So, you might be wondering why this second post on the importance of comments… AGAIN? Well, there’s a story I want to share with you all. While commenting, a most unusual thing happened to me this morning that every new blogger can only dreams of! And I am in the seventh heaven right now :-)
I was at Kevin’s site Blogging Tips a few days ago where Mani, another site author there, had written a post on things you shouldn’t assume about your blog which I found to be pretty interesting and insightful and commented on, asked for their opinion on what I could do to make my blog better so more people can subscribe to it. Mani replied very honestly telling me that I needed to work on my content and titles. I was a bit heartbroken but politely thanked him ….. I was glad for Mani’s sincerity but sad because isn’t that what’s at the core of blogging? Nice catchy titles, creative and compelling content? And those are the very aspects of my blog I needed to improve on.
Not being able to bring myself to write anything good, I spent a couple of days reading many blogs and thinking all the while how these people are so damn creative?!! How am I going to make my blog better so people keep coming back to read it? How do you make them stick? The only oddity I noticed during my blog hopping was that every blog I read during this time, Darren had commented on. I say I found it odd because I never saw his comments on any blogs before, have you?
Well, yesterday I came back to blogging tips again and lo and behold there is this humongous screen shot of Darren’s new site!!! As I started to write my comment on that article, I noticed Darren had already commented there! You can see my instant reaction on that post here and follow the conversation as Darren stopped by to reply to my message.
Needless to say, I am overjoyed :-) Problogger telling me he will be reading my blog is a tremendous honor as well as flattering. My Aussie stars must have been shining on me this week …first me winning that beautiful portrait and today Darren subscribing to my RSS feed…………
Moral of the story? :-) well – this reminds me of Steve Pavlina and his take on Responsibility and the Law of Attraction, in which he says,
It all begins with accepting 100% responsibility for your reality. You’re the one who’s creating it right now. Are you creating what you want or what you don’t want? Change your dominant thoughts, and you’ll see reality change as well.
So, in the concept of blogging, if you really want to get your blog noticed, your audience doesn’t know about you, you have to go find them!
What do you think of Law of Attraction? Does it really work?
Deborah
Kudos to the Pearl girl!
That’s high praise indeed to have Darren following your blog! You’ve got it going on girl! I’d be ecstatic to have him reading my blog.
Just as Christy said, your title is catchy and that’s exactly what you need to catch the attention of RSS subscribers. I don’t use RSS but that’s just due to unfamiliarity (which I need to change). But the princple always applies to Digg, Reddit etc, title is key. And then you have to back it up with the meat, which you obviously have working for you :-)