[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGaGlpsL__w&feature=related[/youtube]
There are plenty of tips on the internet on how to build a blog audience. Here are some tips on how to lose a blog audience:
10. Be nitpicky-If someone deigns to leave a comment on your blog, make certain to correct their grammar, pick apart their argument ruthlessly over minor points and never, absolutely never, address the main point they are making.
9.   Never explain-If you want to post on the Albigensian Crusade, jump right into the subject and give no explanatory background. If your readers are ignorant on the subject, tough.
8.    Ignorance Doesn’t Matter-Just because you are bone ignorant on a subject doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion!   Write what you want to, no matter how factually deprived it is, and let your readers sort things out. Life is too short for research and fact checking.
7.     Use your blog as a substitute for therapy-Scream at your readers if you are feeling miserable, and lose your temper over small matters with your commenters. You will feel better and that is all that counts. If no one reads your blog, that is a small price to pay.
6.     Spellcheck?-Spellcheck and concerns about grammar are for dweebs. If your readers worry about such things, who needs them!
5.     Humor is verboten!-Blogging is a deadly serious business and if what you write causes one of your readers to crack even the teeniest of smiles you have failed.
4.    Brevity?-Here is your chance to at last type that 100,000 word monograph on the impact of Lincoln’s allergy to cats on the Civil War. Remember to include endnotes. Don’t worry about length, as your readers have many hours to dedicate to your esoteric endless essays!
3.    Humiliation-One of the prime joys of blogging is to tear apart people who comment on your posts. Remember to treat them with complete disdain and to concentrate on the main goal of making certain that your readers know that you are in every way superior to them. They will flock to your blog, and if they don’t, who needs them anyway!
2.    Ignore-If someone leaves a comment on a post feel free not to write a response. After all, what do they think this is, a dialogue? This is a monologue and the leaving of a comment detracts from your conveying wisdom to the poor lost souls who come to you for enlightenment.
1.    Dare to be boring!-Being entertaining is so beneath you. It is hard enough to draft the posts, let alone to do it in an entertaining fashion. If they want to be amused they can watch the Golden Retriever puppies on You Tube! If your readers cannot stand tedium and boredom to gain the wisdom that drips from your keyboard, it is their loss.
Follow these rules faithfully and I guarantee that you will soon have a very select blogging audience:Â yourself.
#2 is possible? I have to force myself not to respond to absolutely everything, even when I have nothing to say….
As the cowboy said when asked if he believed in infant baptism Foxfier, “Believe in it? I seen it done!” Sadly there are plenty of examples of blogs where there is very little give and take between the poster and the commenters. Now, often times I cannot respond quickly in my threads due to being in court or otherwise snowed under at the office, but it is a rare thread where I do not eventually try to respond to most of the comments.
I’m pretty bad at number 2. The problem is if I see a comment and I don’t have time to respond at the time I see it, I tend to forget about it. Sometimes a commenter says something that I just don’t have anything to add to. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the feedback, but I have less and less time to engage people the way that I would like.
Don’t just invoke #9 for difficult or obscure topics. Use it for blog references, too. Start every article with something like, “Al’s response to Barbara’s analysis of Charles’s article misses the point as usual.” Don’t let people know who Al and Barbara are, and NEVER link back to Charles. Remember, it’s every reader’s obligation not just to read your blog, but to read every blog that you read.
Paul, I think you normally do a first rate job of responding to comments, certainly better than I do on my more arduous day at the law mines. 🙂
Pinky, that is very true. Some blogs become unreadable over time because they become concentrated on inside blog baseball, and consumed with personalities. In small does that is not fatal to a blog, but when it takes up most blog posts it becomes intensely boring expcept for the blog regulars. Not giving links to articles under discussion is anathema to me, and is a guarantee that I will not finish reading a blog post.