In response to: Msg #196459 Hello Merry,
Hi Merry,
Thank you for your response. And, thank you for the accolade...means a lot to me!
You must be thinking, 'this Tab guy is a crazy one...running the trending analysis of his blogs'...but Merry, believe me, it doesn't take me long to do, but it helps me in identifying the gaps.
To answer your question what gap I found in course of time, let me explain a bit.
I write to the travel column of a newspaper. So, when I started the blog writing in January, although the two forums are much different, I imported some of my styles and experimented with them. And it clicked. For example, whenever possible I try to add some dialogues in my blog so that it is not very dry and makes it easy reading. I have noticed similar style in 'Anastasia78.' That helps. But the largest gap that I have identified so far is that I found people are more interested in reading common peoples' story that is blended in a journey - their joys and sorrows, love and affection, the 'human bondage'. I suppose, that is the human psychology. From that perspective, I have tried to add here another dimension, - some of my blogs have become essentially 'travalogue' rather than 'travel blog'.
I found, people are least interested in adventure type blogs, e.g. ziplining, skydiving, microlite etc. etc. A quick example, my latest blog is about ziplining in Arenal. In a day, I found 'the rate of change in the number of views' is slower than my previous blog 'a multicultural mosaic...". So, it is not the total number of views only, but also the rate of change of views over time. In technical term, we call it 'dx/dt' - change over time. Faster it is, more appealing the blog is. It is the tell-tale sign of appreciation index in my opinion. To make it more appealing, the front collage has become my trademark. The name of a blog also carries some weight I found. One more thing Dave (Dancing Dave) has suggested me, is to include any video clips that I may have inside the blog. I have started that; well, I found that it has some appeal, but not a whole lot. One may ask the question, then why do I write those adventure type blogs? The answer is simple,- I love them as much as I love my other blogs. Besides, there is a cross section of viewers, although smaller in number, those serve their needs.
Sorry, my answer has become too long. I must stop now. But thanks again Merry Jo...I hope I have answered to your queries. Feel free to ask me more. Let's stay in touch.
Regards,
Tab
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