If We Were Having Coffee… Are You Still There? Edition

08/08/2015 17 Comments

If we were having coffee, I might just quote Portal. It’s possible.

I’d also probably tell you about how I started staying home with the Geek Baby this week. It’s maybe going like this. I’d also probably tell you that I’m working on insulation for the house today – so coffee’s about the best thing going.

As my coffee bubbles and pops, I would get pensive. I would want to talk about my future in blogging, I think, in particular.

Flat WhiteThis here blog started as part of a class, lived on and morphed into a place where I wanted to blog about writing… and then I explored and found that there’s both a lot of people blogging about writing, and not a lot actually blogging what they are writing. Updates, craft, these sorts of things, sure. But the contents, the intellectual property, are squirreled away until ready to be published.

So pretty early the wind was knocked out of the sails of this blog. Then we started Comparative Geeks, and it’s still sailing strong. There’s where I can talk about what I’m up to in life. There’s where I’m habitually and constantly writing. There’s where I have a strong and engaged reader base and social media following and presence. So really, most anything this blog could have served me was taken by Comparative Geeks.

Then along came a Gene’O, and right as he started Sourcerer, and his writing blog, and Diana started Part-Time Monster… they credited Comparative Geeks. And our joint blog, and our consistent posting, and the satellite blog here… it all ended up looking a lot like what Gene’O and Diana set up as well.

So I joined in here with A to Z the following year, and from there tried to keep going with a number of Features to keep me writing and keep this blog rolling. However, keeping up this blog while also contributing on other blogs and running Comparative Geeks and life… one by one, the Features went away. I’ve added this one, I suppose, and kept the Wordless Wednesdays running. I’ve even started a new plan with those.

And the coffee share posts do great. Thanks for coffee, I mean that. I need to read more of them, I usually only find time to read two or three. But the Wordless Wednesdays have really died down, and my sketches have gotten almost no likes. And that leaves me with a lot of thoughts. One, do people genuinely not like my drawing? That I need to know! Although it is practice right now. Two, is it such a departure from what came before that people don’t like it here? Three, has my audience here just died off too much? Four, is this just not the best place for this?

I’m not alone in asking questions similar to this – so is Gene’O, with his personal blog. Basically: Hello? Are you still there? See, I was getting somewhere with that. And I think the answer that both of us have come to is, no. No you’re not. Not here. That’s what the bigger, contributor-helped blogs are for. They’re quite simply better blogs, Sourcerer and Comparative Geeks. And that’s okay.

So with the general success of some of the personal posts on Comparative Geeks (like talking about the Geek Baby), and with the success of things like our Instagram, I feel like the last things I am doing here could be better suited to go over there. That I could share my sketching with a larger audience and get feedback on Instagram. That we could share personal fun stories via coffee posts on Comparative Geeks, and maybe even return to a six-days-a-week schedule like in the Before Times.

What do you think, as my coffee bubbles down? Does this blog still serve any purpose? Would everything I do here be better suited elsewhere? What would you do in this scenario? Or if you’ve been here before… what did you do? And thanks for coffee!

Filed under Introverted, Weekend Coffee Share Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

About CompGeeksDavid
Co-founder, editor, podcaster, web comicer, forum moderator, and writer for Comparative Geeks. Father, husband, geek, nerd, gamer, librarian, Christian, Libertarian, Science Fiction philosopher, and probably a number of other descriptors.

17 Responses to If We Were Having Coffee… Are You Still There? Edition

  1. Rose F says:
    08/08/2015 at 8:20 AM

    I’d put this one on hiatus and see what happens if you consolidate. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

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  2. Gene'O says:
    08/08/2015 at 8:36 AM

    Well, you know where I stand on all this, but I’m commenting anyway just to show you the support.

    For me what it’s come down to is a matter of time and attention. I don’t have the time to develop a coherent, consistent stream of content for Just Gene’O, nor the attention to devote to the threads there, even when the posts do well. I think my readers were picking up on that even before I actually told them, and I don’t think anyone’s going to give that blog their attention as a reader if I’m not giving it mine.

    Then there’s the return to think about. Blog writing is fun, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t work. If I have a blog of my own and an open invitation to contribute to two others, and all thee of those blogs have the potential to get me 100 or more readers when I really nail it, I just don’t see why I should spend an hour writing for a blog that’s going to get me 25 AT MOST on any given day.

    I think the visual stuff can be made to fit at CG, and I think coffee posts can go anywhere — it’s all about what you decide to talk about, and using a tone that fits whatever blog you’re publishing on.

    Far as the big question: Does this blog serve? That’s a question only you can answer, because only you know what you’re getting out of it. Most of the benefits of blogging at this level are social and intangible. Far as the traffic goes, not happening unless you’re willing to put the amount of time and content into building this one over the next year that you put into CG the first year, and not without some sort of focus. And maybe you could make writing blog work, but I couldn’t, so I’ve done what I could to encourage the people who were looking specifically for the writing-oriented content to make Write On! Sisters their go-to blog.

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    • CompGeekDavid says:
      08/08/2015 at 4:03 PM

      People looking for a writing blog could do far worse than Write On Sisters! http://writeonsisters.com

      I think that once CG came about, attention has always been the problem here. Some of what I did with features or even A to Z was write in advance and schedule. That’s less attention and more just time management and strategery.

      I think I may try the visual stuff as not a blog post. I’m up to 88 Instagram followers, and a couple good posts this week saw 13 and 11 likes. Tumblr doesn’t do that for me. Twitter doesn’t. Heck, WordPress often doesn’t. I think I’ll try it there – might as well start with some of the backlog 🙂

      And we’ll see about the coffee posts. If we’re going to do them at CG, I want it to be consistently. That’s the thing we’ve done best over there.

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  3. trentpmcd says:
    08/08/2015 at 8:46 AM

    I agree with Gene’O: it’s up to you. How much time do you want to put in?

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    • CompGeekDavid says:
      08/08/2015 at 4:03 PM

      It’s that and, with limited time, how best is it spent/where best can it be applied?

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      • trentpmcd says:
        08/08/2015 at 4:29 PM

        Personally I feel stretched to have 1 blog. I very rarely do twitter and only occasionally post on Instagram. Facebook? forget it. There aren’t enough hours. I set up a second blog and have ideas, but haven’t posted there yet. I’ve had it almost as long as my primary blog…… Do you have time for 2 blogs?

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        • CompGeekDavid says:
          08/08/2015 at 6:43 PM

          Nope but I keep thinking I do! I don’t put enough time into any one social media account, either. Have tried doing more with several over time… None has paid off, but Instagram is moving at the fastest rate!

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          • Gene'O says:
            08/08/2015 at 6:47 PM

            Deep thought: The most successful social media accounts are run by people who focus on one, or at most two networks.

            Think George Takei. When’s the last time a tweet from him crossed your Twitter timeline? Oh! Never. Because he might very well have a Twitter operation, but what George Takei is about is Facebook. Almost exclusively. Something to think about.

            Liked by 1 person

          • CompGeekDavid says:
            08/08/2015 at 7:04 PM

            I think all his Facebook’s are also Instagrams? I follow him there and it’s great – I don’t see his stuff as often on Facebook anymore.

            Liked by 1 person

          • CompGeekDavid says:
            08/09/2015 at 10:00 AM

            Up to 7 likes… One of them is Trent! 🙂

            Liked by 1 person

  4. Diana says:
    08/09/2015 at 9:03 PM

    I was going to say some things, but it looks like Gene’O has already said most of what I would say, and it’s very much like what I said to him as he was deciding what to do with Just Gene’O. What you’re doing here can definitely find a home other places in the blogosphere if you want it to—it’s just a matter of where you want your blogging home to be and how much time you want to spend there.

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