Get A Blogger To Write about You

Reach out to the bloggers.  That was one of the messages that was delivered at the Smart Fabrics Conference that I attended in April.  Wow, I thought... I'm a blogger...  I'm special...

Anyone Can Blog
Anyone can blog.  Some blog to be paid.  Some blog out of their passion.  Some blog because they are compelled to put their thoughts down in one form or another, and they have chosen a blog for that outlet (over a journal, memoir or other format).

But everyone does not choose to blog.  The concern may be privacy, insufficient time or passion.  Perhaps it is a fear of exposing themselves to critique.

Whatever the reason, Those Who Would Blog get the opportunity to observe what Those Who Would Not Blog do not see. I mean no criticism, this is just a statement of fact.

Observing the World Wide Web in Action
I am fascinated by the way my posts and videos make it to the Wide World. 

I do not have access to statistics on my Patch blog, but my Patch posts have made Patch Top Reads at least twice. (One on LEGO Artist Nathan Sawaya and one on Anouk Wipprecht when she visited the LA Makerspace)

One of my videos on my Squigglemom YouTube channel has had over 78K views.  It's been seen in the USA and Canada, in France, in Germany and in the UK.

My Subscribers on my Squigglemom YouTube channel hail from the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Italy, Thailand, India, Turkey, Germany, Egypt, South Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, the Netherlands, France, Spain, New Zealand, Hungary, Japan, Taiwan, Sweden, Colombia, Austria, Finland, Morocco, Cyprus, Indonesia, Poland, Moldova, Libya, Australa, the Dominican Republic, Iraq, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Panama, Paraguay, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Singapore, the Ukraine, Israel, Vietname, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Bulgaria, Portugal and - deep breath - Venezuela.  As of this writing.
 
One of my Patch posts kept showing itself on the Top Posts on the Belmont Shore patch.  This was back when the Top Posts were featured.  I was curious as to why.  So I went to Google Search and typed in "Ford Transit Connect Conversion", or some such words.  Lo and Behold... the third post from the top was the posted titled "The Camper Van of Today? It Could be Very Crafty".

My observations are that it doesn't always present this way on search results.  whatever the reason, it presented itself to the world in a sufficiently high position to be read many, many times.

I had a conversation with a gal who was featured on the Belmont Shore Patch.  She volunteers for Save Our Beach, which does cleanups in Seal Beach.  Apparently she did a video that linked to a Patch blog post that she did, and it received a whole bunch of hits.  You never know what's going to take off on the internet.
 
Writing for Me, Long Beach, Belmont Shore and the World
When I write on Patch, I write for me.  You get to read it.  But I am documenting my experiences for future reference... This is one journal that I won't lose...

On the Belmont Shore and Long Beach Patches, my words are hyperlocal.  But I know from my experiences blogging on these Patches, that my words can reach much, much farther than the boundaries of these two cities.  So my words on these Patches are evolving for this larger audience: The English speaking - and reading - world.

A Blogger's Helper
It's called SEO.  Search Engine Optimization.  You may have seen the term, but you may not know what it means.  Some sites are better optimized than others.  Through their interconnectedness on the internet, the sites can help to get their messages seen.  By Their, I mean the messages of their writers and bloggers.  It's no accident that the top 3 or 4 or 5 "organic" search results are there.  It's because of someone's plan, the quality of the content on the site.

And yes, a little itsy bitsy site such as... http://www.HandmadePenguin.com or http://www.Makersville.net can be optimized so as to be able to rank pretty high for certain searches.  They focus on a specific type of content and having words related to that content show up on a lot of posts and high up on their pages.

And there are sites like Patch that give their bloggers a boost by aggregating the content of all the little bloggers.  Lots of words on the same keywords, over and over agan.  Many sub-sites, many bloggers, many more blog posts.

I can't imagine I'm the only Squigglemom Blogger on the Patch.