The mechanics of visibility

It’s a funny old game, this blogging lark.

When I first had the idea for this blog back in January, I was very unsure of myself, and, indeed about what I would be able to write about. My first postings, back in the early spring were tentative, and I was relieved that no-one was watching whilst I was finding my feet.

As time passed, my confidence grew in my ability to express myself and occasionally produce some nice and/or interesting bits of writing. Satisfaction started to set in, and I grew somewhat addicted to assembling the jumble of thoughts in my head into coherent articles.

People were starting to take notice. Some have come and gone, others have hung around for the longer haul. New faces are always welcome, and it’s great to see.

In time I’ve turned from a shy and unsure blogger into a confident one, who wants his words to be read by others.

But frustration has started to hit on the visibility of the blog. I made a concious decision to host on my own server because I wanted control, and to have the ability to muck about with my own settings, and feel pride in having created my own hosting solution. At the time, this seemed like a great idea, but I can now see the drawbacks.

My blog is not part of a community.

If I’d decided to write on Livejournal, or even on the core WordPress.com platform, then observation suggests that I would have more readers and more comments. Searching across these platforms is easy, and if you wish to belong to a community, it is easy to do so. Indeed these platforms provide a natural melting pot for communities.

Way back in April, I applied to get the blog added to the Autism Hub. It looked like a great site, and as it was platform neutral, it surely wouldn’t be difficult to get added, and thus drum up a little more interest. I was wrong. My application went unacknowledged until the start of August, at which point it was answered with an apologetic email, saying my site was now being vetted and that I should be contacted again within a few weeks. It’s now nearly the end of September, and I’ve heard nothing. I fully appreciate that sites like Autism Hub are run by the good will of people in their spare time, but please, if you are going to offer a service like this, you need to actually maintain it. Perhaps this indicates that Autism Hub is in its death throes?

I’ve joined Wrong Planet, and indicated that I use an external blogging service. Wrong planet say that if you do this, they will link your external blog to their blog page. Do they heck! It doesn’t work, and my emails to them asking for an explanation and if I was doing something wrong went unanswered. Thanks for nothing, Wrong Planet!

Across the months I’ve tinkered with the Google Webmaster site, and of course added Analytics, so I can accurately track site usage. I’ve tweaked my keywords, and I’ve registered with Technorati. My blog has always pinged search engines when I post new articles. All of this has helped a bit. but to be honest, not very much.

I note that Livejournal have an active Asperger’s community. I’m seriously toying with the idea of using a Livejournal account to point at my blog posts, and then cross posting this to the Asperger’s community there. Why? Well, I’d bet that 90% of those who have posted recently to that community have never seen my blog. Certainly none of them have ever posted a comment here. Why would they? They have a ready made community there on Livejournal. Why look elsewhere?

I’ve gone from two or three page impressions a day back in March, mostly from Google search hits, to an average of about sixty page impressions from about twenty distinct users a day today. More than half the people who read articles have been here before, and many are veterans. My RSS feed hit the magical (to me at least) twenty subscribers last week for the first time, and usually generates about a further forty page impressions a day, giving a total daily average of around a hundred page impressions for the site. A couple of times a week – often mid-week – I’ll add another hundred or so impressions a day, excluding spiders and spammers. These spikes are usually when someone new is going through the back catalogue.

All of this is really quite humbling, and if you are reading this now, then I thank you whole-heartedly for doing so.

But it’s also frustrating, because I can see plenty of other Asperger’s blogs that (and I’m judging by the quantity of comments here) get far more visitors – simply, it would seem, because they chose a route that instantly gave them a community. Now I’d like that too, but it seems to be continually elusive.

And of course, community is a two way thing. I have been rather neglectful of posting comments on other people’s sites over the last couple of months. I need to do far more of that, as well as looking at what possibilities there are to get my site more traffic.

All of which leaves less time for writing here. Hmmm. A tricky balance, but one I feel I need to tackle.

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