How relationships affect the blogging process
From starting a blog, to developing content, creating a user-friendly design, attracting visitors, and converting them to repeat visitors, blogging is a process. Without a doubt, relationships plays a huge role in your blog’s success.
Currently, I’m going through the first-round lessons with Wordpress, having just moved from Blogger to Wordpress. I’m tweaking the theme, and deciding which plugins and other features I really need to have. After all, it’s pretty easy to get carried away with all the tools available. Yet it’s important to decide what will work best for you, your blog, and your readers. With this move, I have had to consider things like maintaining permalinks, and blog rank. So far, the search engines show that my domain has not lost its juice. While, like most bloggers, I feel good when I see heavy, regular traffic to my site, and I definitely work towards that, I’ve also come to appreciate the philosophy that what really counts in the online world are relationships – especially those which also reach into the real world.
Having links around the blogosphere – especially if you’ve used your own domain name from the start – will ensure that regardless of the platforms you move in between, relocation won’t “delink” you. Linking has its roots in relationships. A blogger will place a link to you and vice versa based on your relationship. This relationship can be channelled directly between bloggers, for example those who comment frequently on each other’s blogs, are friends on Facebook, hang out in real life, or email each other. Then there is the indirect connection, where someone may deem your blog as valuable because of how he or she relates to your content, and because you give some form of value. When you’ve put in the work to forge and maintain relationships with bloggers and readers, directly or indirectly, this helps your process. In my case, it means that those who I’ve built relationships with will return to see what’s taking place with my move. I’m sure that if you decide to change your online address, bloggers you’ve formed relationships may also help publicise your move.
When I decided to make the move from Blogger to a self-hosted Wordpress blog, I gauged the probability of me having to figure out some of the technical aspects, and maybe even seeking help from some of my tech friends. I also figured that, during the move, my site may have gone done temporarily, and it did. In this period of downtime, people may have landed on my domain through search engines. Unfortunately, I may have lost some possible repeat visitors there. But to safeguard my relationship with current readers, I posted a notice beforehand about the move. I emailed my subscribers and members of the Caribbean Public Relations Facebook group, letting them know that I was going to make changes, that there may be downtime, and that I’d let them know when the site was back up. I also counted on our relationship – that they’d understand if some things didn’t work too right on the site at first.
Blogging is a process, not just with the technical stuff, but also with relationship building. When bloggers made a fuss about Google’s disabling links non-Blogger users sites, they made a fuss not just because Google was placing a restriction on their readers. They made a fuss because they knew that if other bloggers who use Typepad/ Wordpress/ Vox/ Movable Type or any other platform could not leave links, that would act as a demotivator to leave comments. Moreover, it was a direct block to link love, the physical proof of bloggers’ relationships. All of these things, widgets, plugins, search engine optimisation, design, content, and relationship building, among other factors, are critical to the blogging process. As any successful blogger will attest, when you achieve thousands of hits per day you can’t just relax. The pressure is on you even more to deliver, and understand how to maintain the rational, technical aspect of the process, as well as the emotional and psychological. From creation to continued maintenance, blogging is a process.
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Comments
Congrats on the move to WordPress, Karel.
I’m sure you won’t look back.
WordPress has served me very well over the past 14 months or so, and I can imagine I’ll be using it for some time to come.
Karel
Wordpress is serving me well too. I agree with David above. It simply makes blogging easier. Lots of people are leaving blogger due to their comment system that is pretty new. People don’t like having to join and sign in to just comment and they will be suffering in the future for it.
Good luck with the transition and your blog! If you need anything, let me know.
David: Thanks. So far Wordpress is serving me well. I’m still going through some first time self-hosting learning processes, but eventually I’ll get it all 
Michael, thanks for offering. Yes, Google’s move prompted lots of bloggers to move across to Wordpress, even those who were pretty much satisfied with Blogger up that point. Well, I guess that Google will learn that you can’t try to “Googlise” the entire blogging community.
David: Thanks. So far Wordpress is serving me well. I’m still going through some first time self-hosting learning processes, but eventually I’ll get it all
Michael, thanks for offering. Yes, Google’s move prompted lots of bloggers to move across to Wordpress, even those who were pretty much satisfied with Blogger up that point. Well, I guess that Google will learn that you can’t try to Googlise the entire blogging community.
I do agree with you Karel that relationships affect the blogging process. Indeed! Relationships plays a huge role in your blog’s success. It seems that you’re very much familiar with link building and getting hits.
-Joanne
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Just stumbled across this article and I couldn’t agree more. Those “external” relationship really matter to the blogging process. From my own experiences at Caribbean Ideas, I’ve learned that those relationships form an integral part of the blogging process. Very often they act as a catalyst in moving the whole process fwd.
Happy New Year! I see your up and running…you’ve always projected a very professional image even with the old theme. I miss the old pic though… made me feel I was talking to someone and not the hardware. Best Wishes.