Bloggin': So... what else?

Thank you so much to those of you who have already responded to my Bloggin' questions from yesterday!  I was so happy to read your answers!  What do ya say we make this a Wednesday feature until I run out of blogs to feature?  Okay, sounds good to me.

Nataliedee.com

As promised, I will feature my own answers today:

1. Does your blog fit into a "niche" and how do you choose what to write about? Have you ever pulled a post after you published it because you regretted it?

I guess you could say it is a humor blog because I try to be funny. It started as a mommy blog so I could keep track of crazy things my kids said and did, and I found most of the stuff I was writing was about the funny stuff the kids did and funny stuff that happened. So I guess now you could call it a humor/mommy/everyday life blog. I write about what strikes me funny. I have pulled exactly one post after posting it because it was about my daughter and although it was hilarious, it was a little too personal.

2. Do you read a lot of other blogs? How many? Have you had contact with the bloggers, or are you a lurker?

Yes. I read about 100 blogs. They don't all post every day, and I have about ten or so that I really like and never miss. I put blogs I like in my Google reader and I check it every day in the morning when I eat breakfast. ~Helpful hint: as an avid blog reader I think you should enable your posts to be read in-full in a reader. If you only have it so I can read a few sentences, a lot of the time I won't click the link to your blog to read the whole thing because I have 30 other posts that are right there, easy to read.~ I have communicated with about 30 or so bloggers of the blogs I read. There are many I just lurk on. There is one mommy blog that is just kind of a ho hum family-only blog in Tennessee but I've been lurking on it for YEARS. I don't know why. I feel like I'm a fly on her wall that she doesn't even know is there....

3. Do you comment on a lot of other blogs?

I do not comment a lot. I should comment more. I don't know why I don't. I think part of it is total laziness because from my reader I have to open the page of the post I want to comment on, then I have to comment, then I usually have to do the stupid word verification. So if I comment, it's something I really wanted to say.

4. How important is it for you to get comments on a scale of 1-10? 

I LOVE getting comments. I would say on a scale of 1-10 it is about an 9 because although I love the comments, I would keep writing regardless if I got them or not. Whenever I see a comment in my inbox I get a little thrill. I love to know that someone read the post and liked it enough to comment because I assume everyone is like me and only comments when they really liked what I wrote.

5. Do you respond to your commentors?

Not as much as I should. Isn't that shitty? I'm trying to get better because I know when I comment on other blogs I usually go back and see if the author responded. The other day I commented on the George Washington Wired blog.  They had pictures of newborn baby piglets that were just born at Mount Vernon.  I said that there is nothing in the world as cute as baby piglets, and also there is nothing more delicious in the world than slightly older piglets.  I went back to see if there was any follow up and I got an admonishing response from another reader who told me to have more respect for the animals that give up their lives so I can have delicious bacon.  I felt really bad about that.

6. How many followers do you have? How did you get them?

I have 80 people who have pushed the "follow this blog" button. I have followed a lot of blogs and the other day I checked them all out and many of them are out of business or haven't posted in months. (Lightweights.) I check my stats pretty much every day to see how many hits I've gotten and it hovers around 200 to 300 a day but about 75% of those are from random Google searches and those people generally don't come back because they weren't looking for me, or for a blog to read, they were looking for things like "where does a horse's milk come out" and "ativan shut up juice" and they don't generally return. I would guess that I have about 15 to 20 everyday readers, and another 10 or 20 that check in once in a while. How did I get my followers? I begged people to read my blog. Is there any other way?

7. How do you promote your blog?

Promotion? I don't know much about it. I have looked up how to promote a blog and they say to make it easy for people to subscribe in a reader (check), post consistently (check), comment a lot on other sites (not so much), write guest posts on other blogs (anyone want a guest post?), and advertise (I'm not at the point where I think this blog is worth spending money on.) I also started my store but I can honestly say I don't expect to sell anything. I just enjoy designing stuff on my computer.

8. Do you write for any other sites?

I've guest posted before for The Empress, and I've written posts for Aiming Low, LOL, Mypheme, The Chunkersons, and some other regular blogs that have since quit posting.

9. What is your favorite and least favorite thing about blogging?

My least favorite is that a small part of me can't help see it as some kind of competition. I get discouraged when I see a new blog go up and within three months they have 500 followers and 30 comments per post, and their content is kind of iffy. Does that mean my writing is iffier? Probably.

The best thing is that I have an organized easy way to write consistently and that I've made some great friends. When I started I thought it was just going to be a family focused online diary to tell my sisters and parents what my kids were doing. I had no idea it would be so much fun.


10. What advice would you give to potential bloggers?  What do you HATE to see on a blog?  What do you like?


I would say keep writing all the time.  Make your site nice to look at, not too junky.  Link to stuff.  Have cool pictures.  I hate when I click on a blog and they have music.  I HATE that.  I usually won't go back. Oh!  and one more peeve that's not so much a blogging peeve as it is a writing peeve.  What I hate is when people misuse question marks to show that if they were talking they would say part of it like a question.  Example:  "That dolphin attempting to hump a lady taking part in a swim-with-the-dolphins program? Was the most disgusting thing I ever saw."  It's not grammatically correct.  Don't do that.