Remedies for the Small Blogger Blues
For those of you who attended the BlogHer session “Its not your size, it’s your passion that matters” I did today with Jen Lemen and Krystyn Heide, here’s some ideas for dealing with the Small Bloggers Blues
- Take a break from your site meter
- Redefine success for yourself. List all things your blog does for you (fosters gratitude in your life, helps you hone your craft, organizes your thoughts…)
- Write yourself an affirmation. I like this one: “My story matters.”
- Reach out to another small blogger. Take this feeling that you have about being discouraged or not “not mattering” and take it as a cue that you need to reach out to others who are feeling the same
- Join the SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL google group. (I’ll link to it when it is available.)
- Follow an comment you like back to the commenter’s blog you’ll probably find an inspirational read from someone who shares your values.
- Tag your posts with your name (or nom de plume) and your blog name so like minded souls can find you.
- Remind yourself that you are writing for an audience of one. Make yourself a sticker that says “I heart authenticity.”
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on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Advice Girl, Magpie Girl, Rachelle Mee-Chapman, Small is Beautiful.
Tags: blogher07, jen lemen, mama says om, Small is Beautiful
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Entries
July 29th, 2007 at 5:24 am
Rachelle, I like these tips…because I often come across bigger blog writers than myself, and it gets intimidating to see paragraph and paragraph of words followed by numerous comments…
You have inspired a post…
Lil
July 29th, 2007 at 5:27 am
ps. BlogHer sounds great!!
July 29th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
great tips!
July 29th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
so glad you shared these so those of us who were not there can drink up these bits of wisdom too.
July 29th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Rachelle, thanks for summarizing these tips for those of us unable to attend your session! What a wonderful affirmation. It was great to meet you this weekend. Your tat/biz cards are way cool.
July 30th, 2007 at 3:28 am
I wish I had seen your breakaway session as I’m a very small blogger who hung out with BIG time bloggers this weekend. Not that I’m complaining, I had a great time, but still.
July 30th, 2007 at 7:37 am
rachelle, you jen and krystyn led the best panel OF THE WEEKEND. i feel lucky to have been there. up with authenticity! xo
July 30th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Thank you so much for this - I wish I could’ve sat in on that session. I really needed the encouragement… and I’m following your suggestions. :)
July 30th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Thank you for the tips- as a new blogger, I needed these words of encouragement right now :-)
July 30th, 2007 at 10:27 am
My story does matter. I started blogging for a class project, and I have just continued doing it because I love it so much. And, I always felt it was selfish to just write for myself, but I really do just write for myself. Blogging has become cathartic.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Thanks! Good points to keep in my brain! It’s hard to remember to “run your own race” when you see regular daily journal- type posts with 70+ comments! Sometimes, I just have to stop reading and focus on writing only…… :)
July 30th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
thank you for the affirmation. i already took one of your advice and removed the numbers off my site meter button. it does make you sad when you see only 1 or 2 people has visited your blog for a day.
and yes, from now on i will remind myself that i am writing for an audience of one. even if that one person is myself. thanks for this post!
July 31st, 2007 at 7:45 am
This is another classic post that you must remember to repost from the archives every few months. Thank you for this and all your posts on BlogHer. You are so generous.
I’m doing #6 and my blogroll and RSS subscriptions are growing exponentially. To my “to do” list I’ve added “create a schedule for reading blogs”.
July 31st, 2007 at 10:48 am
I’m so small I stayed home!! How encouraging to read this. GOD, I am addicted to the site meter and when every other blogger was at Blogher, my site meter suffered!!
Glad you find your site.
August 1st, 2007 at 5:24 am
these are great tips. both of my blogs have small readership!
August 1st, 2007 at 11:09 am
I’m really taking #8 to heart. There’s been so much that’s happened to me in this last year that I haven’t written about, because my writing was generally uplifting and insightful, and I thought it would bring people down.
Now I have nearly a year’s worth of posts that say a lot about what I was doing on a superficial level, but very little about what I was actually feeling or experiencing. There were days that I didn’t get out of bed, or had to hide in the bathroom of a public place because I could feel the tears and emotions overwhelming me. I should have written about that. Now that I am no longer in that headspace, it would have meant a lot to me to look back on it and remind myself how quickly I got there and how long it took to snap out of it.
I really, truly, sincerely meeting you and Jen and your beautiful families. Those four days made a huge impact on my life that I will never forget.
And I really, truly, sincerely hope you realize what a huge impact you have on people who meet you. Your soul is wide open and it’s something I envy.
Peace,
Krystyn
August 1st, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I just wanted to say that the session about Small Blogging was one of the two best ones I went to all weekend. I’m really glad that you two had the courage to form your own session. I think there was this inert kinship in the room with all the “small-time” bloggers figuring out that their value measured on the same scale as Big Bloggers we saw racing around the halls and in panels. Thank you.
August 1st, 2007 at 6:15 pm
I love this list.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:29 am
“my story matters.”…i love this beautiful list of remedies. i’m just beginning my journey but have had more than a few days already where I’ve considered packing the whole thing in…i’ll keep this little post close by to remind me why it is i began in the first place.
thank you,
k
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Oooo….look at everybody being not so lonely any more!
Thank you to all you folks who believe “small is beautiful.” Thank you for paying attention to your stories, and writing your stories, and sharing you stories. You are doing a wonderful job of being true to your passions! Keep going! Wonderful things await you.
love,
Rachelle
August 7th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Perfect timing…I happened here after Maggie posted a link, and right after I was wondering how in the world to get that site meter up to the triple digits. It seemed like such a lofty goal, until I read this post. Thank you!!!
August 7th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
But my Site Meter tells me that I HAVE to check it obsessively.
Is mine the only one that talks?
August 7th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
A pleasant reminder that I never started my blog to have a following. That’s just icing.
Thanks.
August 7th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Lovely. Thank you…
August 7th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Very nice, thanks! : )
August 8th, 2007 at 2:28 am
Oh, I’m so glad to know that other people get the Small Blogger Blues, too! Sometimes I feel like I have the smallest blog in the world - which I guess is an achievement of sorts…
August 8th, 2007 at 5:50 am
I like the “I heart authenticity” idea. It helps to remember that the point (for me) is that I want to keep writing, and this is one way to do that.
August 8th, 2007 at 6:37 am
This is wonderful. Of course I’m blogging because my story does, indeed, matter. I just need the reminder as much as possible. If anything, I wish I had started sooner, because I feel like I lost a lot of stories.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing that google group. :)
August 8th, 2007 at 9:04 am
The reality is, most blogs are small blogs… with as many millions of blogs as there are now, isn’t an average readership about 10 people?
August 8th, 2007 at 10:06 am
love this ever growing list! okay, one more–invite a non-blogging friend to start a blog, too! you can link to each other as an act of love daily!!! xo all
August 9th, 2007 at 4:50 am
Small is beautiful! :) While it would be nice to have my blog become my job — I started it for wildly different reasons, which are still just as important.
Thanks for the perspective!
August 9th, 2007 at 7:35 am
This couldn’t have come at a better time!
Great advice.
Thank you.
August 9th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Hi, my name is Moxie-Mom, and…I have a small blog!
(huge applause)
I’ve had a small blog for a few years now. But I always blamed others. Like my father-in-Law who would stalk my blog, even when I would change addresses.
Today, I am here to say that I embrace the small blog. It’s small, it’s beautiful, and it’s all mine.
Unless, of course, you want to stop by…
August 10th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I really wanted to go to Blogher. It was in Chicago and I could have taken the train from Indiana and had an adventure all by myself, maybe. I was too chicken.
I participated in a blog carnival this week, posted everyday, left my blog addy on Mr. Linky and gone around and visited other blogs and left comments on the ones I enjoyed. I got about 100 hits yesterday and LOTS of comments! 10 comments in ONE day is LOTS to me! LOL!
Off now to say “Hello” to all the other small and proud of it bloggers!
August 10th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I like these tips. I sometimes feel like there is no point to blogging since I feel no one is reading except the people from my real life that I really wish weren’t reading. However, I didn’t start my blaaahg for attention, I started it because I like to journal and I tend to keep it up when it is online. Maybe I am a bit of an attention whore after all… (Found you via KristyK, I really like your layout).
August 17th, 2007 at 1:25 am
Thanks for the boost and encouragement, Rachelle! It’s nice to know someone’s giving a thought to the little guys out there. Go fellow small bloggers, go!
August 17th, 2007 at 8:59 am
And I do this why?…
Here is a great list of things to consider for “small bloggers.”
It hits on one of the things I’ve always asked other bloggers who didn’t have a huge amounts of traffic. Why are you blogging? Is it to become rich and famous (you…
August 17th, 2007 at 9:31 am
There definitely are some rewards to writing for a small audience. It’s much more personal.
August 31st, 2007 at 6:12 pm
[...] Jen and I are this close to having the small is beautiful button done. I know, it’s been over a month since BlogHer ‘07, but we are mom/artists/community builders types. That is to say, we wear a lot of hats –this makes our work time, well, small. Plus, we haven’t have time to write in an uninterrupted manner since…um… what day did school get out in June?But be not afraid, our children are in school soon and things should progress a bit more quickly. [...]
September 7th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
I’m glad this idea did not fizzle. I loved the class at BlogHer. It was my favorite.
September 11th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
[...] Another article of interest is this entry from Magpie Girl on Small Blogger Blues. I don’t really have the blues about it, but I am a “small” blogger. To be hones, I read a lot out there, but am reading so quickly I don’t take time to comment. I can’t really call that bad or good. Let’s just call it “What’s happen’in right now.” Anyway, I like entry #8: “Remind yourself that you are writing for an audience of one. Make yourself a sticker that says “I heart authenticity.” [...]
November 9th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
[...] dear friend Rachelle who chatters away at Magpie Girl has bestowed upon me the first ever “Small is Beautiful Award” for my [...]
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