Paul Socha
Wisconsin

Leslie’s last blog post..How Chad Nodland is celebrating Sunshine Week

I have been blogging on and off for more than six years now. And I can say that the most satisfying moments have come not with huge traffic spikes or access to a large readership, but when a small number of expert participants congregate around a story, add their thoughts, recirculate it, and make it into something that eventually impacts the national conversation.

Over the last year, I’ve really tried to focus on quality over quantity of posts, cultivating an RSS subscriber base of deeply engaged readers (which now stands at over 600 vs. daily traffic of about 1,000) and growing my Twitter follower base to nearly 500. These may not be huge numbers, but the people who use these tools are the real A-listers. I feel like I have a direct channel to them, and don’t have to work as hard for traffic. Not to sound snobbish, but the people really matter to me are reading my RSS feed and following me on Twitter.

There is a reason Markos is not the most influential blogger on the left, and why he is linked far less than other outlets like TPM: he brings very little new to the discussion. DailyKos is a huge community, but in terms of thought leadership and impact on the left, I read MyDD, OpenLeft, Josh Marshall, etc.

There is also a reason why most local blogs with a few hundred readers at best get more comments than national blogs with thousands. They have dense, interconnected readerships, many of whom likely know each other offline. A friend made a very valuable observation to me recently: it’s more important to get 100 people who all know each other, vs. a 1,000 who don’t. That’s so true.

My advice to new bloggers is to ignore the national space — unless you have a TRULY unique perspective — and focus on dominating a niche, be that in politics in your community (most Congressional Districts still don’t have good blogs, and the good ones are very impactful), or some little covered, emerging aspect of national politics. With the incumbents increasingly entrenched, the blogs adding value today are at those that hone in on interesting stuff no one else is covering. Cover your niche well enough and your blog will be the first thing that pops up when someone searches for your topic in Google.

Patrick Ruffini’s last blog post..links for 2008-03-21

You are 100% correct on all fronts! I really like the way you say “casual attention of the many.” Casual attention is EXACTLY what the A-Listers have. This casual readership usually will not activate, and in many cases the casual readers are just surfing for stuff to glance at.

In regards to the link… are you kidding? I stream DI every day dude! (although, for some reason I haven’t been able to connect to Tribal House for the past few weeks) Plus, you’ve got a great blog and I admire your e-entrepreneurial spirit.

Well deserving of the top link.

-Eric

It is indeed *the who*, it’s important to get the high attention level of the few rather than casual attention of the many.

It’s also important to think about *the why*. I think many numbers go at it with the motivation being purely numbers. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with such a motivation, but in most cases it just won’t be enough because the audiences will be small, and ever so fragmented.

We’re living in an increasingly sped up web, expect fragmentation, micro communities, and micro blogging to take over. Blogging in terms of traditional blogging isn’t even growing all that much, it’s starting to loose out to new forms of “blogging” – micro variations, even the likes of Twitter, etc. What then? Well no matter what medium you’re in, again, attention is what matters, and what you plan to do with that attention.

Eric you also had great points about A-listers missing much. I’d argue there’s still room for very talented upcoming bloggers if they can market themselves well and know what they are talking about. Often times A-listers don’t want to link to other high traffic stories because now they see it as competition. This is where opportunity comes up to pitch to the A-listers, as they are actually looking to link to “smaller guys” and don’t worry as much about turning their firehose at your site.

Thanks for the link on the side btw, not sure I deserve the top spot using the alpha sort!

@ Lennie: Exactly! The traffic, in my experience, starts funneling in when I stop focusing on it.

As one of the ones you’ve helped over the years, I can testify to both the truth of your claims and the depth of your wisdom in all things New Media.

Great post!

~Leonidas