Bloggers' Interactions With Readers Decrease With Prominence

via LouisGray

Bloggers' Interactions With Readers Decrease With Prominence

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Robert is right about this. Interactions really aren't a requirement for bloggers. Think about the core essence of blogging: things that you care about. Whether you get anyone else caring is secondary.

But of course, it's really not that simple, is it? You blog because you feel like you've something of value to impart, be it telling the world about feeding your cats or nailing the next trend in technology. A point I made to Robert was that interactions are important for learning. Assuming you are a student of life, you will need interactions with others to test out ideas and to learn different facts and perspectives.

Interactions with readers, wherever they occur, are also an important part of maintaining “presence” on the Web. No beginning blogger should have the conceit that people will just show up to read his or her blog. You've got to establish yourself out there by making your blog posts, and thinking, visible to a wider audience.

But at some point, bloggers seem to move into a different point in their blogging career. They no longer need the interactions with readers so much. They've arrived. And in the case of Jason Calacanis, after arriving, they leave.

One observation to make is this: the level of interaction seems to vary by the blogger's level of established reputation. As a blogger gets more well-known on the Web, the level of interaction declines.

In fact, I'd wager that blogger interactions follow a predictable curve.

Bloggers' Interactions Vary by Blogging Stage

The chart below graphs the level of blogger interaction with different levels of being “established”:


Four stages are depicted along the X axis. Left-to-right, the stages indicate increasing degrees of success in blogging. “Success” in this case being defined as establishing a voice that resonates with the audience you want.

And what are “interactions”?

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