Saturday, November 3, 2012

I Wasn't Gone That Long!

Well, I come back to my blog on a Saturday night, after being offline since Wednesday, and not posting since Monday. Life gets in the way of blogging sometimes, and apparently fans of the blog had been used to me posting four or five days a week, like I had for the previous two weeks.

I come back, and it was as if I was gone for a month or two. Several fans of the blog comment saying that they missed me, and my weekly readership count had went down from an average of 500 readers, to 215 at last check. Apparently not posting at least several times a week leads to people getting bored. I understand the frustration of my readers. I mean, you start out reading, decide you enjoy the writing, and then all of a sudden, it stops. Annoying, right?

I feel the same way about some of my favorite blogs, though some of them post rarely instead of irregularly. I get into great blogs like Incongruous CircumspectionConfessions of a Heretic Husband,  Past Tense, Present Progressive and Leaving Fundamentalism, which have incredible writing, and great personal stories behind them, but they don't post often enough. I know people are busy, just like I am, but it can be a frustrating wait for more great posts that only come around sometimes as infrequently as twice a month. Speaking of Leaving Fundamentalism, I still haven't heard anything further from it's author, Jonny Scaramanga about the guest post he was going to write. Oh well, I'll wait until it arrives, and let everyone know when I've finally received it.

Blogger has a feature that allows you to "schedule" a post, write it now, and determine at what time and date that will go up automatically on the blog, I have thought of writing posts in advance when I have the time, so that I will have a reserve of posts that I can release later, making for a more regular blogging schedule, and readers will be able to expect regular posts. What do you as a reader think of this? I'm not sure if it will post to Google + as well as the blog, when it auto posts, so I don't know how effective that will be, but I can try it. If I could get more guest posts, then this would be much easier to do, if you have something to write about for my blog, let me know at ramblingsofsheldon@gmail.com. I don't know if my readership numbers will start coming back to their original levels once I start blogging regularly again, but I could use some help, if you like a post, click to share it on social media, using the buttons at the end of each post, help to spread the word, it will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading the blog, and I hope my blog list on the homepage here kept you occupied while I was gone, I always try to promote great bloggers when I come across them on both the blog and on my personal Google + page. Let me know you are out there, join the discussion either by leaving a comment at the end of the post, or talk to me on Google +. Having more readers is always great, but I want more engaged readers, people who join in on the fun, that would truly mean more to me, more people discussing the topics rather than simply reading and moving on.

4 comments:

  1. The whole deal with creating post dated blog posts isn't really my style, I will, however, write several blog posts in a day and sometimes once a day several days in a row, other times my life gets in the way. I have a technical blog I haven't written on in a couple weeks now, still get a crapload of traffic.

    If you can't end up writing a post, just give an atheist picture as an "Atheist Image of the Day" sort of thing. Something I've been thinking about doing and preparing for myself for my own atheist blog.

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    Replies
    1. Atheist picture of the day, now that's an idea, it would make for an easy post.

      I think I will have to start posting on a regular basis if I am going to keep up this blog, my followers apparently have come to expect it. Give the people what they want, right?

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    2. I've found that it's a momentum thing. It's like riding a bike, if you don't pedal regularly things slow down.

      I'm still thinking of guest post ideas. I'll let you know when I have something but since I've pretty much committed myself to at least one post per day, it may be awhile coming.

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    3. What I'm going to do to keep a regular posting schedule is use the scheduling feature on blogger, so that fans of the blog will have new material at least 4 days a week, I'll try that out, and see how the fans respond.

      My busy schedule will be changing in about a month, I get a promotion, but with it comes a different (and busier) shift.
      I worry that I won't be able to keep up the blog to everyone's expectations.

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