Saturday 16 September 2017

Supporting Blogs

Blogs and supporting them.


Firstly, I am taking pause to stop and thank all those people have become followers of this blog. Your visible support truly encourages me to be thoughtful about my content and to keep a regular output.


Another reason for this post - Jonathan Freitag is a wargame blogger who runs a blog called Palouse Wargaming Journal.



He is just celebrating 5 years of blogging and is running a prize ‘give-away’ as a thank you to those that follow his posts.


Jonathan not only posts weekly, but he is also a prolific supporter of other peoples blogs. Top man. 


Maintaining a blog requires that most precious of commodities to us all - ‘time’ and supporting blogs by following is an important indicator to a blogger that their output is interesting to others and worth carrying on with.


Bloggers give their time freely and run blogs in the spirit of sharing, so, if you enjoy anyone’s blog content, please consider making a comment and if you find yourself repeatedly visiting the same blog, please consider becoming a follower of the blog - it really does incentivise a blogger to stick with it.


For more information about Jonathan’s thank you ‘give-away’, please use the link below.


LINK - http://palousewargamingjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/five-years-before-screen.html


13 comments:

  1. Much appreciated and well said, Norm! Five additional contest entry slips for you! Good luck in the drawing.

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  2. If a chap follows a blog through Feedly, where I follow about 40, does the blog author know that he is being followed?

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    1. I don't believe so. To get counted and provide visibility to the author, it is better to "Follow" on the Followers gadget. Of course, I could be completely wrong!

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  3. Ah well, I'm here so Norm can add another to his list, but Feedly keeps my blog following organised by genre and stops my email getting clogged. I wouldn't do without it :0)

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  4. Thanks, you raise an interesting point about a hidden audience.

    I don't really know about alternative readers for blogs, but as for following wargame websites, Shaun Travers (from Shaun's Wargaming with Miniatures blog) brought VisualPing to my attention, which gives the user alerts when a particular web page is updated. When I last looked at it, you could reference 30 pages for free and then had to subscribe. But it worked for say anyone following my 'This Week' page on my Commanders website, which I was using for a while as an alternative platform when I stopped blogging for a spell last year.

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  5. I guess Feedly is a bit like VisualPing. It monitors blogs that I have linked it to for fresh writings. I run it on my browser and look in for updates during the day.
    I thought I was following 40 blogs but a count shows 83 in four main genres of which the Wargaming one is divided into four sub sections.
    It could be a good time to prune.

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  6. A very good post. “Comments” and even “Likes” help greatly.

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  7. Thanks, I have just popped across to your blog and enjoyed your article about Twitter. I suppose we need to stop thinking that everything on the internet is free, it's generally not and in the case of bloggers that is represented by time and effort. To stop and comment or like seems a reasonable recognition of that.

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  8. I sure wished I had folks who read my blog do what your folks do - comment every now and then. It would be nice to know if what I am writing is worth it or not. :(

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  9. Hi AB, just popped over to your blog and enjoyed the posts, which clearly have had a lot of time spent on them. I commented on the postcard game, because I am presently tinkering in trying to put something similar together, more as an exercise in design discipline.

    I hit a couple of hurdles in accessing your site, so some suggestions that may help. I clicked on your posting name to get your profile, which should give me a link to your blog, but you don't have one, so I had to google search you on 'angry bunny wargame blog'. If you click on my poster name, you will see my blog name and link.

    When I posted a comment, I got that Catcha Robot thing that just went around and around for ages, I thought it had locked me out, so just pressed submit and it took me through anyway … anyway, unless you are getting a spam problem, having people go via the robot filter is just an additional hurdle to posting.

    I also not that you blog body (in the margins) does not have any tools to show followers or a follower button, so someone may come in and like your content, but their visit becomes a one off because they don't have a way to follow content.


    finally, when I publish a post, I also go to various relative forums and advertise the post with a link, so boardgame forums for boardgame posts and figure forums for figure posts.


    Mostly my comments come from a small group of like minded kindly supporting people who my nature comment and support the blogosphere, but I also like with the knowledge that I my posts widely read by folks who will never post even the odd thank you and like you, some of my posts are article in length.


    I have almost stopped blogging a few times and indeed have a backup paid for web site that I can retreat to and just post for pleasure if I ever abandon the blog, but as several people told me, the best way to blog is just to do it for yourself and enjoy the process, that way comments may or may not follow, but it matters less.


    From your content, you strike me as someone who is naturally creative and I think blogging is likely a good outlet for your skills and passion, I'm afraid we must just live with the fact that often consumers take free content and don't really see the creative aspect of the work or its true value - but we are living in a world where there is a massive amount of free content, so much so that many browsers are over-whelmed by the volume and can only get a brief out line of a post before they swipe on to the next site.

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  10. Haha, Norm; I'm pretty dense and it was a while before I realised the Norm on Consimworld was you! You make an excellent point about the amount of content. I buy lots of boardgames but almost invariably rules updates, errata, living rules and scenarios are put up online by publishers. So much stuff that I bought a Seagate back-up hub to store it all on.

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  11. Usually by the time a game hits the shores of the UK, any major errata issues have often been identified and BGG is an ideal platform for getting that out.

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Thanks for taking the time to comment