Monday 28 January 2008

On Blogging

Over the last few weeks I've seen a few commentaries on blogging and blog stats that have got me thinking about these in relation to this blog. The most interesting discussion I found was here http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2008/01/vital-statistics.html.

I only recently managed to sort myself out with stats stuff, and the results are fairly interesting. As well as getting regular visits from many of the people on my blog roll, I get quite a few sent my way due thanks to A Very Public Sociologist and also from the attacks at us (Socialist Students in Bangor) made on the blog of the some of the local SU officers. I also get quite a few visits from people surfing the internet and searching for bits and pieces on crime and criminology, and recently international visits have increased to the extent i've had visits from every continent with the exception of Latin America.

But this doesn't really help me. One of the main things I'm trying to do with this blog is to develop a marxist analysis of crime, it's what well over half the posts here are about, and the last post (below this one) was of an essay I'd recently written and no-one has commented (although from the stats i can see several people have read it). This is a little frustrating becuase I really do want criticism and comments on this piece as it covers an awful lot of stuff i'd like to talk more about.

The other side of the blog is mostly about local stuff, what's happening at the Student Union in particular recently and I don't really expect all that many comments on this becuase most of my readership isn't in Bangor, and frankly I prefer having the discussions about this face to face on the streets with students where I can explain our ideas more fully.

So how do improve the comments and get more relevant visitors. Some of the suggests from the post on AVPS may indeed be useful. commenting on other blogs, getting links posted on other blogs and commenting regularly on other blogs probably would help get more visitors, and to be honest with me being so busy this is one of the reasons why my visit count dipped as low as 10 a day over this weekend.

But this isn't enough, when I go comment on other people's sites the posts have to be interesting - i'm really not that interested in reading re-posts from other sites or things that I don't care about. I either need to cultivate a more criminology orientated audience or develop posts which will interest a larger section of my readership.

I should also probably post on some stuff people have heard less, some of my top commented posts http://leftwingcriminologist.blogspot.com/2008/01/crime-in-revolutionary-russia.html and http://leftwingcriminologist.blogspot.com/2007/10/venezuela-and-crime-preliminary.html were precisely this kind of post.

The other thing I've started doing is writing some posts well before I post them, especially if they are book reviews etc. as this will obviously help when I get to a time when I've been really busy (like over the past week). Anyway, if anyone has more suggests please feel free. As an aside, I wonder if anyone has done any sociological research into blogging and why people do it and their other involvement, I think it would make interesting reading.

6 comments:

Frank Partisan said...

The last post was too long and academic, for a blog of general interest.

When I post, I take into account who I want to comment on it. I purposely provoke.

I would divide your last post into small segments, that could be digested and talked about.

american left history said...

Yes, anything that you can get your hands on from Canno is filled with some insight we can still benifit from today. I am adding a link to your site on my blog-Leftwing Criminologist is in the house- Regards Markin

landsker said...

Greetings, from South Wales.
Purpose?, is always a good basis for a post.
Goal? is the same question, but with, in light of your research into criminology, a touch of euphimistic alliteration.

I am putting "Leftwing Criminals" into my blogroll, seems appropiate.
Thankyou.


All about, Mr Markin, good to see another mariner.

Anonymous said...

Agree with suggestions above.

The essay is too long for this format, the initial bullet point statement was better suited

You might want to separate the blogs into two as the audiences are quite different, especially if you want to develop a little community of people with the same interest in criminology and Marxism

Anonymous said...

On the two audiences thing, I think you should keep it how it is. It seems to have worked ok with my blog so far ... that said, I haven't really blogged that much about sociological things recently, but that will change over the coure of this month.

On length, long essays tend not to attract that much comment. As a rule I ever try and let anything grow beyond 1,500 words. If you want to say more then chop it up into separate posts, as I did with a really long piece on public sociology back in November. Also, Renegade once gave me a piece of good advice. One way of attracting commentary is by seeking out those blogs who deal in the kinds of topics you blog about. So for instance, you write a post on environmentalism, try and drum up some readership on Green blogs ... I think you get the picture (btw, are there any criminology blogs out there?)

Leftwing Criminologist said...

i think i'll avoid the long essy posting in the future... anyway see today for another post on this topic