Thursday, March 30, 2006

Dear, Dear You

Although a post like the one two below merits no more than a passing glance, after a cursory review, I've decided to draft a relatively brief response for the benefit of our dozen or so audience members.

Ultimately, and I think you'll agree, what makes a successful mutli-person blog are continuous, high-quality posts. By "continuous," I mean daily -- or every other day at the very least -- and hopefully more often than that. Perhaps it helps if they are published at regular intervals during the day, but the jury is still out on that. Then, by "high quality," I mean posts with substantive value. Sure, a few "social" or "activity-driven" posts can be tossed into the mix to engage the audience, but in the end, the majority of posts need to have explicit or implicit value (of some type or another) to the readership or else the blog is a virtual windbag.

On the count of "Successful Blogging," then, for whatever reasons, we are failing. Dissimilar to our novel and short story writing where we truly collaborate, our posts are written individually. Therefore, our audience receives my more prolific drivel on a continuous basis to attempt to keep a pulse beating in The Realm, while they experience your quality only when inspiration and free time align, which remains about as often as the planets aligning. So despite my attempts to resuscitate The Realm with literary hot air, the blog flatlines due to your frequent hiatuses. Because, let's face it, despite my Ken is not a nose-picker post attempting to draw attention to your absence, I'm fairly certain no one else actually noticed anything out of the ordinary for this blog. Obviously, no one mentioned it. You can peruse every comment for yourself. You'll find no, "Hey, where's Ken been?" or "I sure do miss Ken and so does this blog" comments anywhere under any post. And I'd have to reason that the cause of this disattention is that no one thought you were actually gone at all. They just figured you'd post your infrequent yet genius posts when you regularly do, which is to say, irregularly.

I'm not sure what's to be done about any of this, but I will say it's good to have you back. I guess I'll see you in a couple of weeks or a month from now when you post again.

4 comments:

Diabolical Genius said...

Now, now, flattery will get you nowhere.

But it is nice to hear you finally admit that I am the diabolical "genius".

I also think that you have very clearly laid out just why we do make such a great blog team.

You provide the constancy and comfort factor that people need in life. Your fiber-based regularity is akin to death, taxes, and dryer lint, things you just know will be there no matter what.

While my "infrequent genius" provides the hopeful expectation of a falling star, a winter snowfall in the South, or winning the lottery.

Good job by you. Your excellent work has blessed you with a comment from me.

Rich said...

Speaking of fiber, slap-happy comments like yours send that raisin bran I ate for breakfast to my lower intestine before I can read from the top to the bottom of it.

Pass the Pepto Bismol please.

Kevin Knox said...

I assume you guys are just joshing, but you've passed my ability to tell.

Have fun!

Rich said...

Yeah, we're just having fun. We also see each other face-to-face enough to let the other know we're playing around... and there's usually no question.

But it all works well with Ken's April Fool's joke if others question a little.

Of course, it becomes a totally different thing with people you don't know so well and don't have the luxury of seeing. The edge has to come off either a little or a lot depending on degrees of familiarity.