Gifts to your Readers

Goodbye Blogroll Buddies
Recently (in the past few months), Mal (Mal's Mulblings), Grant (Discombobulatingrant), Muse (private blog), Amber (Absolutely no exaggeration or sarcasm Here) and Monica (My lovely and charming life), have either declared that they are on a hiatus or they have been on one. Furthermore, Ddot (The Palace) has not been blogging. And they were all very good reads, and more importantly, they were virtual friends.

When I wrote about traffic last week, I mentioned cleaning up hyperlinks that were no longer active. I appreciate when people have two blogging lists – one for active bloggers, and one for occasional bloggers. Well, I have taken the plunge and removed bloggers who no longer add posts from my blogroll; this was a painful experience. The most painful was removing Ddot, the self-described king of the bloggers or the blogosphere, or whatever. Oh, but I felt compelled to at least link to them in this post (I will look every once in a while). Ddot was my first link, so removing him was tough. Too bad I don't keep alcohol in my top desk drawer.

These bloggers probably really did, more than anything else, force me to start Battle of the Blogs. I really did not want to do it (because I really thought it was going to fail). And I have really lost a lot of blogging buddies. I understand them not wanting to continue to blog. I won't list the reasons – that would be the opposite of what I want to do – I want to encourage those to write and possibly share their writing with others. I really think this helps, in some small way, make our world a better place.

Giving Gifts to Your Blogroll
I have had posts in the past that have been clever, and also have given back to those who read my posts. Once, I had a post where I gave "virtual Christmas presents" to some of my frequent commenters. The post went over really well, as I knew a bit about them from their blogs and made the gifts personal. I also made a post for Academy Awards, and which of my blogger buddies would win which award (again, being bother personal and hopefully funny). It may have all started with a post about assumptions I make about the people who frequently comment on my blog.

I have not done a similar post in some time, for two reasons: (1) these posts take a lot of work, and (2) I have a much smaller audience now. For those of you who have a loyal following, this is a way of giving back to your most frequent commenters. Granted, it does not have appeal outside of your group, unless of course, you incorporate a bit of humor into the post.

This suggestion will not drive traffic, but may help ensure that your readers stay loyal to your blog. I sometimes wonder if I cared more for doing stuff like this, if I would have more loyal readers. Whether we like it or not, when we blog, we become connected. In a world where real connections seem to be disappearing, perhaps this is a good thing. Perhaps it is driving us not being connected. This, my virtual friends, is a discussion for another time. Me, I just want a Diet Dr. Pepper.