It’s been a few weeks since I setup the blog. I’ve had a goal to post often, and by often I mean about 3 times a week. I did not realize what that meant at the time I think. I imagined this blog to be something similar to a bit of a tech-cool-stuff blog. The kind of thing you read when you want a personal opinion from someone, or a cool idea you’d like to head up.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that a lot of it was inspired by Paul Stamatiou’s blog. I came across Paul’s site a little less than a year ago. He’s a bright guy who has a lot of valuable insight into our particular field (web developing), and I realized that doing what I do, I’m missing a big piece of the puzzle: Hence the blog. So I had pictured blogging away about cool technologies that I came across and used, but I also wanted to bend a bit more into the realm of “cool stuff I made”. I really enjoy DIY, stuff out there, and if I can take a few hours to build something, I’ll often pick it over buying something (The exception here is if what I’m making would cost more in time, energy, money than buying something that accomplishes the same task)
So I’ve been trying to find the right legs for the blog. I’ve posted just a few times, and I’m pretty certain that my readership, including me, is floating in the single digits. I’m trying to change that. The aformentioned Paul also happens to be the founder of a company and it’s eponymously named product called Skribit. Skribit is a tool designed to help bloggers blog more and better, by polling their readers.
The theory is this: You have readers that visit your site, and read your posts. You also don’t know quite what to blog on next, or maybe you don’t know what to blog on at all. Skribit allows your readers to provide some input into what you’re doing. On your blog you have a little box that invites readers to make suggestions.
They add an idea, and then other readers of your blog can vote that idea up or down as they prefer to see your next post. It’s an interesting idea. It really provides a democratic method of looking at how blogs work. Blog readers have always been able to do this really. Before, it has come in the form of emails and comments about particular topics. With Skribit’s form of social suggesting, readers have the advantage of being able to utilize a group-think mentality to whittle-down writing options and have a hand in the direction that a particular blog goes. Before this, the best you’d get would be the people who offered comments, which I see usually being a particular subset of readers. With Skribit you get more people offering suggestions and voting on them because it’s easy. Right there on the side bar they can plug it in, and off it goes.
The trick of Skribit is you have to have readers. That’s something that I’m working on through a few different avenues. Hopefully as readership rises, my audience will have some input to offer.