RSS Feeds: It's our fault that bloggers write about the same things
Have you guys ever wondered why a lot of bloggers seem to blog about blogging? I have… a lot. But the answer is pretty simple. It's a question of popularity. You see, I have visited a lot of social bookmarking and networking communities and it seems that only certain topics keep getting more and more popular, no matter who writes about them. With no offense to communities like Digg and BloggingZoom, it appears to me that the majority of topics that become popular are the ones that either talk about technology, celebrity gossip, politics or (in the case of BloggingZoom) making money online through blogging. In fact, I think about 80-90% of the topics submitted to BZ fall into the category of blogging about blogging. It's about finding the lowest common denominator in this instance and that is blogging.
Technology and especially computer-related technology is another sure draw on many popular online social websites.
See, I think the core problem is that off-beat articles rarely get appreciated by the mainstream (whatever that means in this case). And I think that any general-topic community which gets popular inevitably faces this problem. BloggingZoom, in this case, would attract a lot of bloggers who, in turn, want to attract other bloggers. What else to write about other than blogging? In fact, as such communities become more popular, I expect the overall quality of submitted articles to get lower and lower. Because once the secret to attracting attention is discovered, it's a formula that will be repeated over and over again (and optimized for less effort over a period of time) by webmasters. Look at Digg if you have any doubts on that score.
My theory is that, no matter how talented a writer you are and how knowledgeable you are in certain topics, you'll only get popular on the Internet if you cater to the majority. And if that means dumbing down to the audience, so be it. A lot of writers are adopting this principle and it gets depressing to see how easy it is to fall into that trap. So why blame bloggers if they choose to do it?
Of course, there are the real niche communities. Recently I joined an online forum for cartoonists, because I love to draw. But those kind of communities are specialized and don't attract the general crowd. I've felt that the only way I can draw critical response to any of my artwork is by giving them exposure on specialized online communities (for graphic artists in this instance). Similarly if you are a photography hobbyist or an aspiring professional, the best way to draw attention is by joining a community dedicated to photography. No matter how popular you might be online, the general crowd will not be able to offer you critical insights into your craft. Of course, there will be some people who will say "wow… that's great" or "how did you get that cool lighting effect?"
What's the point of this? The point is that even with so many social networking sites around, I doubt whether the traditional, specialized online discussion communities will ever disappear. They might not attract the attention of the mainstream audience, but they will always draw the knowledgeable crowd of specialists out there and continue to put quality ahead of quantity.
And before you ask, yes, I can see the supreme irony of this topic :P
Hari writes about a wide variety of topics on his own blog, including "Humour, comics, tech, software, reviews, essays, articles and HOWTOs intermingled with random philosophy now and then".
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Hari, you make some interesting observations in this post.
Personally speaking, I'm not the least bit interested in the "gossip" type posts, regardless of whether they're found on BZ or through Stumbling or wherever.
What Jessica Simpson, or Britney Spears, or any of the other celebrities are up to, I couldn't care less. Those are the posts I don't visit on BZ, or thumb up on Stumble upon. Not that they aren't well written or whatever, just not my cup a' tea.
I understand your point about how "blogging" seems to be the Tag used most on BZ. Sometimes I have difficulty in finding posts of interest to me to Zoom, especially when I look through the "family" section to try to build relationships with those within my own niche.
I listened to Darren Rowse' brief video today talking about actively participating in social media, and he made some very good points if you wish to check it out for yourself.
There are definitely posts I Zoom on BZ, and I search like crazy to find interesting posts, but most tend to be about blogging. I am actually a bit surprised that my post published today didn't get more zooms than it did. Most of the traffic to it came from it being Stumbled by a very well-known blogger I linked to in the post.
That's all I'm going to say right now about BZ, but it's been on my mind too lately.
Lin Burress's last blog post..5 Ways To Make Your Blog Posts SCREAM For Attention
Haha… Lin, yes, my point is that the general discussion type communities tend to attract more people who want to gossip. The specialist communities attract people who have specialized knowledge in their area of expertise.
hari's last blog post..Geeky and Meeky 19 – Then and Now
We hope that eventually more bloggers that represent other niches keep joining and the options will be more. It is funny because the fact is that the Blogs that have nothing to do with blogging are the ones that are benefiting the most from Blogging Zoom.
Also if you look at the front page of BZ today and for the past few days since the Zoom count was changed the most that are making the front page have nothing to do with Blogging.
Vic's last blog post..Fantasy Baseball News Draft , The Top 9 Players
Hiya Vic, the problem is…I've been on BZ for the last couple of hours zooming everything I could find of interest.
So much of what I found on the front page is a bunch of celebrity gossip "shyte" about Gene Simmons, Britney, Jessica, Sex Tapes with Gene Simmons etc. :roll: RT needs an image for a "yawn" to express sheer boredom.
Vic, I end up digging deep into just submitted posts or "upcoming posts" to try and find something of interest to ME, that I would want to read and zoom for that blogger.
Sometimes I have to scroll for a few pages at a time before I come across something NOT related to the latest celebrity b.s. (Yawn). See what I mean?
Lin's last blog post..5 Ways To Make Your Blog Posts SCREAM For Attention
Vic, still you cannot deny that a majority of bloggers have identified that only certain topics get popular on BZ and attract attention. This is not a criticism of BZ in particular, but how online bookmarking/social communities work in general. So I'm not sure how you can influence this.
So even if all of them (such topics) don't get popular, I cannot count how many times I've seen an article on "Creating great content" or "Best ways to make money online."
There are a few gems even there, but most of the content is recycled from other sources.
hari's last blog post..Geeky and Meeky 19 – Then and Now
You are preaching to quire buddy cause god knows I am tired of reading how to blog articles and it seems every day 500 new how to make money blogs pop up.
Again the reason why many of this gossip articles get more zooms has to do because that is what people are searching in Google.
I will give you an example:
http://bloggingzoom.com/CelebrityGossip/Federica_Fellini_Video/
http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=federica fellini nude&meta=
That post got today 223 Unique Hits from Google.
Now we have upgrades coming that will make it much easier to sort through articles we will even have Groups. I have not posted on my blog for 2 weeks because we have been working hard to get all this upgrades working correctly. But the overall aim is for just that for the users to be easier to find the articles they like and jump over the crap that they have no need for.
Keep this in mind when you ask yourself who is Zooming and who is not. Right now Blogging Zoom is 70% organic in other word 70% of the daily traffic comes from Google the rest are you folks coming to the site to either Zoom or submit. If you look at the users that are Zooming a lot lately they are not even bloggers they are people that like BZ and now are just users most of this came from Google.
Way to many times I read a submission that the post is awesome but the way it was written it has no chance what so ever to get traffic from Google because for SEO reasons it is not well formed.
Again I hope all the new upgrade will help with socializing and finding content much better and you folks can have an easier time finding the content you like.
You're right on with this post, it's something I've been meaning to write about for a while (and I do have my own ideas as well). One thing not to forget is that bloggers, no matter their niche, will find it easy to write about blogging and making money because that's what they do on a daily basis. I often find myself falling into this trap of writing only about blogs for a week.
It's good to know that some readers do dig down for stuff that doesn't follow the crowd. I considered joining BZ but after looking at the posts, I thought "what's the point?" My topics are usually pretty off the wall, and sometimes I think that's more of a handicap than a virtue.
Sylvie, I often browse a page or two on the "published" section/Home page, and then I jump over to the "upcoming" posts and seek out posts of interest.
While we're all certainly wanting to get our own posts zoomed and commented on, I really enjoy finding other posts that are well written and of interest to me (and hopefully of interest to others) to zoom. I zoom other people's work far more than I submit/zoom my own.
Lin Burress's last blog post..5 Ways To Make Your Blog Posts SCREAM For Attention
Troy, I think your blog is unique in some respects. I didn't find your writing to be the same tired ideas found on certain other blogs.
Sylvie. very interesting blog host/platform you're using. Never heard of it before, so that alone makes you stand out from the crowd. I love exploring obscure (no offense intended at Orble) blogging tools/platforms. :D
hari's last blog post..Geeky and Meeky 19 – Then and Now
You're right about Sylvie's blog platform, I've never seen it either. Somebody should write a post about it :D
Great article and good points. I do from time to time make sure that I write a post about blogging just so I'll get some hits in hopes that a few will read some other stuff and enjoy my sense of humor.
It's definitely an uphill battle, but if that's what it takes to get noticed occasionally, I feel I need to do it.
Hi Jeff,
Once in awhile I get some flack from people criticizing me for writing about blogging, when my particular niche is relationships, family, that sort of thing.
I don't write about "blogging" very often, but since so many posts on BZ fall into that category, it makes sense that many people would want to continue using that "tag" in hopes of getting some traffic.
I really DO hope that more people will join BZ, and that it won't become another Digg, which is on my "shiite" list. :mrgreen:
Lin Burress's last blog post..5 Ways To Make Your Blog Posts SCREAM For Attention
So do I, Jeff. So do I. That's why this article ;)
Ironically I wouldn't consider this article as being anywhere near my creative best, yet it has drawn a lot of attention, because well, it's about "blogging" :razz:
I draw a lot of cartoons on my blog being an aspiring amateur cartoonist, but they don't always get maximum attraction, which is surprising, because I think cartoons/webcomics are small, easy-to-digest content for the average internet user.
hari's last blog post..Geeky and Meeky 19 – Then and Now
Hari, I stumbled one of your cartoons for you. Hopefully now you'll get more exposure :). I too am surprised to hear that they're not more popular, maybe writing a post where you collected the best ones/ones with most hits and then promoting that would be a good idea.
[...] Exploration. We should not only explore the blogosphere for new, insightful voices, but also the topics. Blogging is a powerful tool, we shouldn't use it only to write about making money online. [...]
Hi Troy. Thanks. I'm seriously thinking of moving my webcomics and my satire articles into a new website.
That will save me a lot of headaches. Now if only I can finish programming my PHP blog/CMS engine.
hari's last blog post..Geeky and Meeky 20 – Unacceptable Answer
I'm the only one who voted for that idea in the poll, but yes I think you should move. Better yet, why not just use b2evo's multi blog functionality to start a photoblog where you can put this stuff. Easy as pie, and takes advantage of this killer feature!
I'm kind of surprised that everyone isn't tired of talking about blogging already and they aren't just all out there doing it :mrgreen:
My experience has been that all of my submissions were fairly popular at BZ, but the ones I liked the best were pure humor/comedy and these did the poorest in a couple cases. I guess I should have been writing about humorous blogging, and then I would have had a runaway. My Red Deer Digest site does get some referral traffic from BZ, and I don't write about blogging at all in those posts.
Anyways, here we all are yapping about blogging, which as you pointed out, Hari, is quite ironic. I love it!
I think moving your comics to a targeted new site could be a good thing for you. Cartooning is something I dabble in myself, and I find hardly anyone pays attention to it.
Tim's last blog post..New Red Deer Movie Theatre Nears Completion
Thanks, Tim. Yes, I have thought about moving my cartoons to its own website. The problem now is choosing a good CMS/blog or doing it on my own by placing them in static HTML pages.
hari's last blog post..Geeky and Meeky 20 – Unacceptable Answer
Hari,
You're spot on with this and I have certainly been guilty of doing this myself.
My blog is supposed to be about web development, but I find I often write about blogging – and more people read / comment on those posts. When I write posts on web development or obscure WordPress plugin hacks, not many people are interested.
So, leaving social networks aside, my individual experience on my blog backs up what you're saying. I am going to try to break out of this rut…
I might just go and write about this on my blog now. :)
Stephen Cronin's last blog post..JobsInChina Presents LocalCurrency For WordPress
I often feel the temptation myself. But I try my best to offer variety on my blog, because mine doesn't target any single subject (I will avoid using the over-abused word "niche") :D
hari's last blog post..Geeky and Meeky 20 – Unacceptable Answer