This is another post to celebrate olivetalks has survived three months. Three months don’t seem like many, but blogging and even more, doing so regularly, can be very exhausting. If you have ever tried to do something regularly outside working hours (or even during working hours) you will know it requires loads of will power (although it does help to be in a team where everyone is as hooked to the task).
These months have been fun. Interesting. Insightful. Intriguing. Stressful. Addictive. Addictive!? Yes, blogging is addictive. But not at the beginning, later. Later you say? Yes, later. Bloggers go through 5 different stages. 5? Yeah, that’s the number of stages I have observed so far. You mean like the 7 stages of grief? Kind of. Really? Yeah. How do you know? I went through them. But if only you went through them… well, and ZoltarStark. Two peas in a pot. True, but the olivetalks team’s experiences served to create the theory and now we are testing it. I know personally two other bloggers who have started blogging recently and I can see at what stage they are at the moment. Really? Yeah. So these two bloggers will serve to test the olivetalks-blogging-theory? Well, the two bloggers serve as our first two “guinea pigs” to check our theory. To test your olivetalks-blogging-theory? Now you named our theory, not us. Well, it’s a cool name. Ok. So what are the names of the stages? They are… And does every blogger stay in each stage the same amount of time? Well,… And can a blogger go backwards? What? I mean, if a blogger passes a stage, can they go back to a previous stage later on? eeeh… And do you think there will be more stages? Hey! let me tell you the 5 stages first! Then ask! ok…
olivetalks-5-stages-blogging-theory (oh, crap, the name stuck) He, he, he… Shut up! ok…
- Blog fright
- Blog doubt
- Blog fever
- Blog exhaustion (plus blog stats plunge panic attack)
- Blog peace
1. Blog fright
It takes the blogger a few weeks or even months to come up with that super cool name the blog will have. The blogger finally buys the domain, obtains a hosting service and sets up the Wordpress or b2evolution or Blogger or… blog. And then… nothing. All the cool ideas he/she had for the blog disappear. All they can think of writing is “Hi, my name is yyy, and this is my blog. Hope you read me”.
For the blogger to gain confidence and improve from this post (or even several posts) to less timid posts can take days if not weeks. It is a daunting moment. The blogger suddenly realizes what they write might be read and their opinions criticized, ridiculed or… ignored.
2. Blog doubt
The blogger starts writing posts with a bit more confidence. He/She sees it is not so hard and hey, what he/she wrote the previous night is actually interesting… And then the blogger checks the stats and realizes that nobody but their mother has read the posts. Hmmm… is it because the posts I have written are not that interesting? Will anybody ever read my blog? What’s the point? Am I not thinking too much of myself for believing I could blog and people might want to know what I have to say? Should I not just stop? What if blogging is not for me?? - The blogger cries with amounting panic.
3. Blog fever
Suddenly, after a few (a couple, a dozen, a hundred…) posts, a Googler reaches one of the blogger’s posts. A Googler means someone, not family, looked for something using a search engine like Google or Yahoo, and found the link to a post of the blogger and actually pressed it and visited the blog. The blog has been found! It has been read! If the blog has something like Clustrmaps or any other kind of map that shows where the visitor’s to the blog come from, the map might even have an extra dot (besides the ones marking the author’s location and his/her mother’s).
The blog has been read (doesn’t matter if it was only by a couple of random visitors from even more random cities), the blog’s raison d’être, has been discovered. And here starts a period where the blogger needs to publish every day. The blogger cannot see but posts in every task/story/anecdote/experience of the day. All day’s activities become posts with titles, tags, categories… The blogger cannot go to sleep even if it is 5 am in the morning and he/she must get up to go to work in an hour, if the day’s post has not been published.
And if a comment is by any chance left by someone (again, not a blood-relative), the “hyper-ness” will prevent the blogger from sleeping that night completely.
4. Blog exhaustion (plus blog stats plunge panic attack)
Suddenly, because of a work deadline, a trip, an absolute physical/mental breakdown or a blogging aversion reaction, the blogger will stop writing posts. The blogger will try to think of things to write about and will come up empty handed (empty headed?). He/she will feel their brain is depleted. All there was to say, has been said. Feck the blog and its overpowering control of my life! - the blogger will scream to the silent computer.
And days/weeks/months without posts will pass by. And the world will still go round even though the blogger has not published anything in two days, a week, two weeks, a month… But out of curiosity, the blogger will check the stats from time to time. The stats will show that the number of visits continue to increase. How can that be??? Maybe the quality of the posts wasn’t so bad, and Googlers keep finding the posts. So without posting new things, people still come? Wow! Forever? Will they?…
OH! NO! The stats went down!
One day the number of visits will drop, maybe only slightly or not really overall, just at a particular time or day, but the blogger will suffer the blog stats plunge panic attack and the fear of losing those readers will prompt the blogger to go back to writing…
5. Blog peace
After the blog stats plunge panic attack the blogger will realise two things: blogging must be done regularly to keep the visitors coming but it must be done without losing oneself in the process. A new post doesn’t have to be published every day. Blogging must be done as long as it is entertaining not as a compulsory task. If it is raining, it can be quite nice to sit in front of the laptop and write a new story for your blog, but if it is sunny, dude (or dudette) go out!
The end of the 5 stages of bloggers.. until a 6 one is found…
What do you think? Are they true? Did you go through those stages? Do you find yourself in one of those stages? Did you “lose” someone to blogging? How long…
Woman, now you are the one asking loads of questions…
Oops, true.
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not a blogger, but a fan… this post was priceless
Thank you olivetalks’ fan
I’m guessing you have lost family to blogging? he hehe
See, I’m still in between 1 and 2.. I think.. Now has does a blogger get more readings? What does a blogger need to do. Answers in another blog entry please.