Boring Site Stuff

I subscribe to a lot of blogs.   A LOT.  And, to be honest, I simply don’t have the time (or patience) to read everything.  I don’t know who would, without spending 100% of their life on the computer.  So there are some posts that I skip.  And some that I don’t.  I thought I would share some things that I look for when scanning through my reader and what generally catches my eye, versus what I generally mark as read and move past.  WIthout further ado, here’s how to get me to read your blog post:

• Publish full feeds.  I cannot stress this enough.  When I’m crunched for time, the blogs that publish partial feeds are the first ones I skip (and that’s if I’ve even subscribed to them in the first place).  If you don’t care enough to put up the full feed, I don’t care enough to click through to read the post.  Simple enough.
• Avoid long chunks of text.  This means long paragraphs that aren’t broken up.  I’ve been known to do this myself, so I apologize.  But when flipping through reader, trying to get things read, I tend to skip over the posts that are just large blocks of text because, quite frankly, they take the longest time to read.
• Don’t post about sports.  Or music.  I don’t care.  I’m not a sports fan.  And I’m not a music fan.  So post your fantasy football picks and your favorite You Tube videos all you want, but I’m gonna pass.  It’s just not my cup of tea.
• Don’t start off a post by warning me that this is a long post.  Because I will glance at the clock and say to myself, “Oy, I don’t have time for a long post.”  And I will skip it.  And then I’ll go back a week later and mark it as read because I still don’t have and now the post is hopelessly outdated.
• Include pictures.  I love to read posts that have lots of pictures.  The pictures are not only interesting to look at but break up the monotony of the text.
• Post little snippets.  Not every post has to be a super-long narrative.  A small conversation from the day, a picture you took, a thought that made you stop and think again… I love these.  They’re interesting, quick to read and then I can move on to the next post.  I often don’t follow this one.  I’m sorry.
• Vary the tone of your posts.  You may be going through a rough time, but if EVERY post is depressing then I’m going to want to skip over them.  I’ve tried to be particularly mindful of this and that’s why after a couple of “woe is me” posts, I’ll try to post something light.  If I see the fifth whiny post in a row from someone I subscribe to, that post gets put on the chopping block.  And if it keeps up, I unsubscribe altogether.
• Don’t post a lot about an issue that I am opposed to.  This is particularly true during election season.  Now, this isn’t something that a lot of people can (or should) help.  But the fact of the matter is, if I subscribe to a blog and then they start ranting about liberals or how McCain is the Second Coming?  I’m not going to read it.  NOPE.  I guess this is why I’ve TRIED (not always successfully) to tone down my own political posts.  Because I know half of everyone wouldn’t want to read that.
• Don’t just put out posts full of links to your other blog gigs.  If I open up a blog and see that the latest post is full of links to their paying gigs and nothing else?  I skip it.  If I want to read their other blogs, I’m already subscribed to them and hence already know about the posts over there.  A better way to promote your other gigs is to throw a line or two in at the bottom of a regular post with a link.  I’m far more likely to actually read that.
• Keep review posts to a review blog.  Even if you aren’t a member of BlogHerAds and don’t need to separate the two.  Because when a blog I subscribe to publishes a review for something I don’t care about (or worse, that smacks of “pay per post” type deals), I skip the post.  Again, like I said above, put a link in a regular post to your review blog.  If it’s something I’m interested in learning about or if there’s an associated giveaway, I’ll go check it out.   I do subscribe to some review blogs and some of the posts I read and some I don’t.  But I like to know, going in, that that’s what I’m going to find.

That pretty much covers it for me.  So I want to turn the question on you guys.  What posts do you generally skip when you’re trying to burn through your readers?  What makes you more likely to read a blog post?  Do you have any hot-button issues (like the full feeds thing is for me)?

You might be expecting to see my weekly “You Need to Read” feature here.  I hate to say, however, that if you’re looking for it that you’re about to be disappointed.  However, I’m reassured by the belief that not that many of you will be looking for it anyhow.  Could be that the only person who will really notice it’s absense is me.

I’m taking a little break from YNTR.  I may even take a little break from the blog altogether.  I haven’t entirely decided yet.  I just know that I woke up this morning and the last thing I felt like doing was putting up that list.  And once I got over feeling guilty about it (okay, that’s a lie, I still feel guilty), I decided I should post something.

Something.

Heh.

It’s probably just your average blog-funk.  Everyone gets them.  First, I didn’t feel like doing the WordPress Bootcamp, now the YNTR list and maybe next week it’ll be blogging altogether.  I don’t want it to really come to THAT, so I’m trying to cut this funk off at the pass.  Stop it in it’s tracks, if you will.

For now, let’s just call it a break.  Not just a break from YNTR, but a break from the blog.  Chances are, it’ll only be for the weekend.  Shoot, it might only be for a couple of hours.  I may be back here tonight with some frittering nonsense to bore you to tears with.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this precious moment…

It doesn’t matter that I included this little bit at the bottom of last night’s post:

(this is pretty tongue in cheek, I hope you realize that.  I’m not THAT pathetic.)

Okay, maybe it was because it was in really tiny type or you all thought it was another pathetic link to something I’ve written elsewhere (speaking of: check out the post I featured on Blog Nosh today!)  For whatever reason, I get the impression from a lot of my comments that you guys think I’m whining about not having visitors to my blog.  Which, I guess, SORTA but that wasn’t the point of my posting the post in the first place or the point of the graphic.

I get a lot more people to my blog now than I did even a year ago.  That just rocks my socks.  What puzzled me about those stats the most was the weird DIP they took yesterday. I know stats go down on weekends (I have been blogging for four years nearly, I think I know that by now).  But it was such a DRAMATIC dip and fairly uncharacteristic.  So I called attention to it.  And, yeah, I tried to be funny.  But I don’t think that came across too well (note to self: don’t invest in a career as a comedian).

I just don’t want anyone to think that I am one of those bloggers who once they start getting actual traffic start complaining about their stats when most bloggers are happy to have 50 visitors to their site in one day.  (And yes, I know, it TOTALLY looked like that.)  When I posted that, I was watching the Emmys with Kile and feeling a little giddy.  Why the Emmys made me feel giddy in the first place, I have NO IDEA.  But I checked my stats and without pausing for a moment, thought, “This would make an awesome post.”

Apparently… not.

Anyhow.  No, I’m not conceited.  Please don’t think that of me.  I won’t threaten to fire any of you ever again.  I PROMISE.

People.  What do I have to do?  Do I have to post nude pictures here? (Not of me, of course, that would likely have the opposite effect.)  Would you take a look at this pathetic sight right here?

Do I have leprosy?  (It’s not contageous you know, that’s a myth.)  But SERIOUSLY.  Today I had the worst stats I’ve seen in at least thirty days (if not sixty… ninety… I could go on.).   Was it my obnoxious self-aggrandizing poll?  Was it my links list (have I jumped the shark with that?)?  Was it my total “phoning it in” post from today?

Seriously ya’ll.  If things don’t start looking up, I’m gonna have to let you all go.  And in this trying economy, no one wants to see that.

_{(this is pretty tongue in cheek, I hope you realize that.  I’m not THAT pathetic.)}