Saturday, August 20, 2005

The Name of This Blogging Game is 'Self-referential'

I surrender.

While perusing my states at Site Meter, I discovered that two of my visitors had clicked onto Joystory via www.msnbc.msn.com. I blinked three times but it still read the same. I thought: What??? I mean, I have this fantasy/hope/delusion that someone from an established media might someday discover Joystory and find something here worth linking back to, or responding to via comments or email or--and this is the most over the top fantasy/hope/dellusion of all--discover my awesome [;)] writing talent and point me toward a paying gig in which I can support my habit with my habit. My 'habit' being reading, writing and thinking. But I am not yet deluded enough to think that less than one month's worth of amateurish promoting could have brought me anywhere near such a dream come true. So since Site Meter offers active links to the referrer pages, I was able to click over to the page where some one (two some ones) had clicked over to me. And this is what I found:

Blog Talk
Conversations in the blogosphere about Anna Quindlen


This title headed what appears to be a live feed of a Technorati Watch List which monitors all blogs mentioning the target 'Anna Quindlen' who just happens to be a columnist on Newsweek. It seems they have done this same thing for each of the Newsweek columnists.

Anyway. This was the link to Joystory which I found there:

Summer Reading
... for Nicholas by James Patterson How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen The Sound and the Fury by William ...
Posted 3 days ago in
Joystory 2 links

And I just had to laugh. For of all my posts this one was the least likely to showcase my 'awesome [;)] writing talent' for it is nothing but a list of some of the books I have read this summer. I posted it when I was desperate for a post but too cross-eyed and brain-fried with fatigue to compose anything of substance. And yet this throw away post has generated more search-engine referrers than any of my other posts. And is one of the few that has generated both comments and emails. Go figure.

Maybe I should blog the entire list of 100 books that I finished in 2004.

And, yes, I completely planned this post as an attempt to reproduce the effect. It's at least as effective at promotion as hours and hours of bleary-eyed browsing on Blog Explosion. And self-referential seems to be the name of this Blogging Game. If I can't shake the feeling that calling attention to myself is unseemly if not downright sinful, I might as well get out of this game.

Update: Sorry Anna for misspelling your name in the first attempt. I'm so embarrassed. So much for that awesome writing talent.

2 tell me a story:

Wyrfu 8/20/2005 9:25 AM  

It's called self promotion and it's something writers have to get into whether we like it or not. However, we can help each other get better at it and improve our chances of success while doing so. Have a look at Writers Blog Alliance, read the FAQ and decide whether you're interested. Even if WBA doesn't achieve its aim, all who participate in it will have increased their profile at the very least. Think about it. :)

maria 8/20/2005 9:45 AM  

Congratulations for being mentionned on www.msnbc.msn.com

This could be the beginning of a
beautiful thing for you.

All the best,
Marie

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