One headline leapt out at me today. Problogger expert Darren Rowse asked, “Are you Prepared for a Worst Case Blogging Scenario?”
A tight, sick feeling gripped my stomach and squeezed.
I worry about my blog all the time. How can we get more hits? More feed subscribers? More comments and interaction? More action, period. I feel a deep responsibility for this blog because I care about it – and Darren’s question scared my pants off.
What if all my readers went away? What if my traffic died completely?
What would I do?
Well, I would listen to Darren’s video, for starters. This was actually a first for me – I don’t really like watching movies on my monitor or hearing sounds while I work. I don’t like to stop writing to listen to videos. Sound, to me, is extremely distracting, as is anything that moves. Up to now, podcasts and videos haven’t interested me in the least.
But I was scared. What if my blog – my wonderful playground of advice and ramblings and opinions and bits of Jamie’s life – had no one but me who cared about it? So I clicked and waited for the video to begin.
It was a weird experience. I couldn’t listen because I was too busy thinking to myself, “Huh, check out the accent.” Darren had a cool one. Then I found myself analyzing his facial expressions, the kind of glasses Darren wore, his baseball cap, that he had good public speaking skills…
Oh, right. Pay attention, James.
I realized a few seconds later that I needed a pen and paper to take notes. Darren was giving points, suggestions and ideas… and after I closed the podcast, I wouldn’t have those points handy. Damn.
I came to two decisions. The first decision was that the video was interesting and informative, and short enough to be useful without eating up my time. It had been worth my while.
The second decision was that I really don’t like watching videos on my computer screen. I can’t pay attention enough, I can’t take notes, and I have no written reference to go back to.
Oh, well. At least I tried!
