Blaugust Day 10 – Is Blaugust Driving My Traffic?

If I had Wilhelm’s airy lightness and ease with statistics, I would be backing up my thoughts with numbers. But I am not he (for which we are probably all suitably grateful), so instead I will speculate in a manner unsupported by facts and jump to conclusions like a drug-crazed llama.

Is Blaugust driving driving more traffic to my blog? Well, as I realised when I started this post, it’s probably my usual yes, and no. Unlike some (Mr. Murf, I’m looking at you) I haven’t exploded on the scene — even the Blaugust scene — with the force of a thousand suns. Which in his case is amply deserved since aside from posting well, he has also been devoting a great deal of time and effort to being a part of the Blaugust community.

For those not taking part — yes, there is definitely a community (as in, group of people) and a sense of community in this endeavour. It’s made up of some very energetic individuals who seem to manage to interface with everyone, some far more reticent individuals, and a pack somewhere in between that interacts with a fair few — but not necessarily all — the other Blaugustinians. I try to be in that last group but I still have at least a dozen blogs to add to my blogroll and limited amounts of energy to devote to it. I’m hoping others are making up for that apathy. Regardless, I certainly get the feeling that many of us are trying to achieve the same thing, that many of us are struggling with the same issues, and that shared effort does tend to make the load a little lighter to bear. The marathon runners’ version — only with blogs and asses in chairs.

And as with all communities, you tend to get out what you put in. Making a lot of effort to support, commend, encourage and engage with others unsurprisingly tends to get others to reciprocate. I’ve seen it myself — both in terms of others’ engagement with me but definitely in terms of my engagement with others — as I’ve attempted and mostly succeeded to follow Kanter’s suggested comment-a-day effort.

My Basenji, Mogwai, says OHAI NEW READERS! Tickle me?

I was here before Blaugust, and it’s possible the bump in my views could be due simply to the fact that I’m suddenly posting every day. It’s also very likely that it’s not, because most of the comments have been coming from Blaugustinians — but then my longer-time readers also know they don’t need to comment that often (no, it’s fine, my ego can take it! /hand-to-forehead). I had a great many more visitors when I was actually, you know, posting regularly, but there has still been a bump since we’ve gone from a few score random and/or pity and/or stalker views to many more score regular daily views.

So yes, Blaugust is driving my traffic, if only with the force of a brown dwarf, which I’m fine with. Too much traffic and I’d start getting worried and paranoid and mumble about needing to perform for the audience and how much I couldn’t care a whit about audiences and can’t you all go away?? <shifty-eyes>

It’ll be a lot more interesting to look at this in a month — first to see if I’ve continued posting at all (or whether Blaugust has made me run screaming for the hills), and second to see who sticks around. And before then, it will be interesting to see how we all fare as August winds on. I’m having a whole heap of trouble posting these last few days, but I suspect that’s due to my general gaming malaise, ennui, and other too-cool-for-school French words — when that passes and my energy returns, so will my ability to just blather on about games, gamers, and gaming in general.

I’m not a big fan of ending posts with questions but this one is obvious: How about you?

I’d certainly love to hear about other people’s traffic bumps or outright shot-out-of-a-cannon experiences in the short time we’ve been doing this. *I* have most certainly been reading more blogs and I make a point of visiting the actual site of at least half of the ones I read every day (since posts are collected for me in Feedly but don’t count as page views*) — which means I’ve been contributing to increasing other people’s traffic too, which feels kind of nice. It’s been a while since I read many blogs. This is exhausting, but fun.

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* Just because I don’t let my traffic drive me doesn’t mean I don’t watch it with interest, and I’m sure most everyone else doing Blaugust is aware of their traffic and any potential changes to some extent.