The Baby gets Married

One of the great things about blogging, as opposed to most kinds of profitable writing, is that you, the blogger, get to pick your own topics. Which is why writing this post today is proving to be a little awkward for me. You see, I am writing this post as part of a competition that I am participating in and the topic has been selected for me. It’s making me feel a little nervous.

Don’t get me wrong. I have done a lot of writing for others where the subject matter and topics have been assigned to me and I have not only delivered successfully, I have almost always enjoyed the assignments. In fact, one of the advertising claims I make, and it’s an honest one I might add, is that I am capable of writing on just about any topic and writing from a range of perspectives including ones that I may not believe in myself! So, writing on topics that I have not personally chosen is hardly alien to me.

However this, this is a little different. Perhaps a lot different. You see, my blog is my baby! This is my kingdom (queendom, really)! This is my stomping ground where I get to say and do what I want to say and do and nobody can tell me otherwise! This is where I am the boss! If readers don’t like the topics I handle here and how I handle them, tough luck! This is the one place in the whole wide world where I feel I can say and do as I please, if I choose to! This is sacred ground, people, where I design my own rituals and observe my own traditions and make my own obeisance and CHOOSE MY OWN TOPICS!

And here I am, about to desecrate my own temple by writing on an assigned topic! No wonder I am feeling nervous. Nervous, did I say??? Now if that isn’t an understatement! Feels more like separation trauma or manic depression! God forbid, I have succumbed to the cunning and conniving of….wait for it…Entrecard and Sezwho!!!!!

Oh woe betide, I am about to commit the one act that I shall never forgive myself for, an act that I am willingly, nay obsequiously, selling my blogger soul for! And far from dreading it, I am actually relishing this unholy desecration of my blog temple! If you find me alive at the end of this post, it would have been the devil himself that has kept me alive!

Right then. Now that I have got that off my chest, let me get right on with this post, shall I? Here it is. (Incidentally, the assignment post is about the Entrecard-SezWho partnership but I really must give you a bit of background first).

According to the scant research (mostly hearsay from other bloggers) that I’ve done, first there was Graham. He gave birth to a baby and named it Entrecard. It was a pretty smart baby because within eight months, it had acquired a following of some 14,000 bloggers (not all of whom are soul-sellers like me, I might add). And, it did it in the slickest way you could possibly imagine. Want to know how?

Well, first, it made just about everything free. Bloggers could join its community (did I forget to mention that Entrecard is, among other things a living, breathing, blogging and ‘dropping’ community?) for free. It also provided you with a free business card and gave you the option of replacing it with your own unique design. I mean, how good is that?

Next, it has this genius of a system whereby you get rewarded with credits for visiting other blogs and ‘dropping’ your business card while you’re there. Kinda classy, wouldn’t you say? Now, as if that weren’t enough, this Entrecard baby also allows you to use your credits to buy advertising on other blogs! Cool or what? Did I mention that all this is free? Yes, F – R- E – E.

But wait, there is more. Heaps more. Entrecard, which is no longer Graham’s baby but his now, adolescent child, never rests! It is forever plotting devilish schemes to encourage its community of bloggers to improve the quality of their posts, raise the profile of bloggers throughout the Blogosphere and support each other by commenting on each other’s posts. So, in the last two months alone, Entrecard has organized two ‘Comment Rushes’ where bloggers have been asked to comment on the post of a selected blogger in order to raise the profile of that blogger within the community and to give her/him a bit of a leg up.

And there is more. In the last month or so, Entrecard organized a huge Diggathon, the aim of which was, once again, to help members get more exposure and more traffic. As you all know, blogs without traffic are like undiscovered diamonds – hidden and unprofitable. So, Entrecard members were asked to join Digg and make each other their ‘friends’ and when deserved, digg their friends’ posts. Many bloggers discovered Digg as a result of this particular community drive.

Did I say there was more? Indeed. And this is where the plot really thickens to the point of congealing. I mean, we now have a partnership – the Entrecard-Sezwho partnership. Now I have only just met SezWho and I can tell you that my first impressions of it delight and thrill me!

Here is a blogger-serving system that encourages you to comment on your fellow-bloggers’ posts by rewarding you with credits (Remember the credits I mentioned before? Yeah, those types)! You see, comments are what keep a blog alive and vibrant. Without comments, even a brilliant blog (such as mine ;-)) gets petrified, cast in obscurity and left to erode. A blog without comments is like an unattended feast – great and plentiful in its offerings but no one to partake of it.

Now, if you’re already impressed out of sight, you ain’t seen nothing yet! There’s more! You are rewarded according to the quality of your comments and that quality is evaluated by your peers! Is this blogging utopia or what???? The upshot of all this is that if you want to get lots of credits, you will need to write well and comment well.

But there’s still more! Yes, sing it out from the blog tops. There is more, more, more! But, given the already lengthy length of this post, I shall give you the ‘more’ in dot point:

• By writing well, you attract interest in your blog and this generates comments
• By commenting well, you attract interest in yourself and your blog and so you get more traffic
• By commenting well, you attract interest in another person’s blog and so they get more traffic
• By getting more traffic, you both reap rewards, whether of a monetary, literary and/or personal nature
• By getting good writing, good, quality comments and more traffic, all Entrecard-SezWho members thrive, the community thrives and matures and Graham’s baby, now married, can produce even more genius offspring.

Oh, don’t you just love a story with a prosperously good ending?

To blogging and beyond!

Love always, Lucy

For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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