Imperfect

blog discovery thoughts

Inspired by the recent blog discovery exchange:

  1. Antonio's Are you reading the same blogs over and over?, updated with You ARE reading the same post over and over
  2. Ava's comfort bloggers response to Antonio
  3. Antonio's On the effects of responding to other blogs response to Ava

Do we expend too much attention on influencing readers? They can frequent comforts and discover novelties through their desired proportions. They can gain insights whether obsessing over their favorite works, skimming the top of what's trending, or even facing the chronological firehose.

Harnessing the firehose expedites my start for responses to inspirational writing. Doing so also shows how discourse can linger and different perspectives can inform creative work through synthesis. Whether before publishing or over longer periods of time, I can leaven my drafts with others' emergent thoughts or my own past ideas. Finding mutual benefits this way, like multiple email conversations blossoming from the synthesis of posts (like in magnitudes of friendship), can feel very rewarding for all parties involved.

Yet, other methods or combinations are more viable for different writers and aims. I believe reading preferences are more diffuse among platform readership than our expectations lead us to believe. I think the many grassroots community showcases that bloggers tend to further support my hypothesis. You can signal valued virtual neighbors in many optional ways including blogrolls, postrolls, link collections, directories and even reblogs of poignant posts. Then, add as much context to those as necessary to make them worth clicking on for those in search of just that.

Winther says Blog discovery requires effort and I agree, with him further noting that:

We need to go back to the early days of the web, where we basically just went on a link safari and organically stumbled upon cool sites.

Knowledge of, access to, and usage of such tools mentioned above feels like an important addition to how a notification-free life can yield smooth operation. A fun experiment could be identifying how to best translate successful offline searches for novelty - whether it's visiting new locales, enjoying new experiences, or even finding new friends - to our online activity. If you somehow have the opposite problem, flip the experiment on its head.

Every platform, community, or discourse kerfuffle further shifts my belief in centralized platform metaphors (like Sebastian's Bear is a Magical Coffee Shop and stonesoup shack's Bear blog feels like an allotment garden) toward more decentralized and distributed models. Platforms host many different niches and scenes, each with interwoven yet unique audiences. Creative outlets here and elsewhere span topics across slices of life, technology, politics, gaming, self-help, creative writing, and business just to name a few. Players are bound to frequent and socialize within different parts of the ecosystem from their competitors and collaborators alike.

With that in mind, many tools can be used to navigate this platform sanely. Grazing by titles or subject matter attuned to what you post about or yearn for can get you far. Witness all the pseudonyms people use (including yours truly) to speak more freely, practice the art of publishing, or prepare themselves for true publicity. Otherwise, you can connect and filter your way into the communities you wish to inhabit within the greater community. Physical and virtual third spaces have different seating areas; use them to your advantage.

You're free to make your presence as discoverable as possible. I believe providing my audience more discovery methods means finding more collaborators to work with. In fact, I have felt a growing urgency to strongly defy obscurity, particularly on a platform level. Admittedly, I can do a better job of this. Having only this virtual home to my name doesn't strike me as being resilient enough.

One reason to turn off discoverability is to mitigate spam from a barrage of empty posts or pages, which Matt Bee raises in Community, Not "Engagement". Besides turning on discoverability once the post or page is populated enough, there are other ways around this that don't impact discoverability. For example, you could choose to publish discoverable posts or pages after they have enough substance for yourself or readers. Doing that and working on them as drafts on your blog, notepad, or elsewhere yields a double win: your content is discoverable and readers have content to enjoy too.

Unreachable creators can act as effective discovery engines too. I spent a good while posting responses without any way for readers to contact me. While I don't have proof to back the following up, that didn't stop readers from being introduced to authors and writing they otherwise wouldn't have found. I find improving visitors' probability of organically discovering useful messages, even if it's not directly from yourself, worthwhile.

One of my posts hit the front page last year as I recounted in numbers as play:

Sometimes posts of mine, such as echo chamber thoughts, make it to the Trending page on the waves of local discourse or similar luck.

Yes, I expressed excitement toward others' silent acknowledgement of my writing through incrementing a number. However, the visibility earned me no follow ups. Visibility affording connection is exciting and encouraged. Visibility affording winning by myself feels lonely in comparison to winning with others.

Later conversations emerging from other posts were much more fun to play with and gratifying to receive. Kind emails finding my inbox without needing my posts to win above others is satisfying. While I'm grateful for remote attention, certain kinds of numbers make you feel more heard, loved, and energized than others. If upvotes won't consistently nor efficiently help me find and cultivate my tribe, I can pivot elsewhere. See another sentiment from the same post as above:

For example: let's say I could trade my total upvote count for an equal amount of emails from bloggers or readers like you. I would accept that trade offer in a heartbeat.

I cherish serendipitous appreciation, particularly the kind where readers fuel our fire even without trending posts. I think the best votes you can get are still numeric, but those that require multiple steps: emails, comments, guestbooks, remixes, etc. Although, I can agree that finding out what to say can be much more difficult than clicking a button. Sebastian celebrates his "resurrected love of email" in Emails Are Making Me Happy Again, giving us a blueprint to start with:

"write me and say hi"

Feel free to add more to that, but it alone makes the blank slate that much less intimidating. Let your continuation spread genuine love, curiosity, interest, and other emergent, heartwarming emotions. Share or appreciate a thought-provoking point, devotion to process, or whatever you believe will be warmly welcomed. Making new friends online and offline can be easier than you think.

Few creatives persist long enough to be widely read, revered, and respected. Most blogs will be inactive in a year's time for lack of process, utility, or social proof. Find the few that will reciprocate love, curiosity, and security with you best. Find those that will go above and beyond to survive the long game with you. I see the focus on the 80/20-rule, snowball analogy, inequality, and other topics within .dash's On Comfort Bloggers and the 80/20-Rule as further support for this initiative.

As far as your information diet goes, it can be worthwhile to respect more choices:

Read what you want. It's your pastime.

But what do I know? I'm just a random person blogging on the Internet as a passion project. I hope this can become more than that over time and effort. Perhaps it can with your help?

Want to reach out? Connect with me however you prefer: