Suffering from ‘blogonliness’

WITH BLOGS being the ‘in’ medium of communication, there are few who do not have blogging presence online. Blogs are essentially the ground beneath our feet. And let’s admit it: we don’t want anyone we know in real life to read our blogs and find out what we have written about them, do we?

But the real charm of blogs lies in the fact that it facilitates interaction with like-minded people around the web, through various interesting tidbits like shoutboxes, tagboards, comments and guest maps. Who doesn’t like a link saying ‘20 comments’ or a nice full shoutbox or at least 50 entries in the guest map?

But then, there are times when the once active blog turns into a lonely journal. Yep, there isn’t anything more frustrating than spending a lot of time in putting up all the interesting paraphernalia on the blog, only to find out that one is a victim of loneliness (‘blogonliness’ if you please).

Blogonliness basically materializes when there are no or very few comments on every post, the tagboard/shoutbox has loads of empty spaces and the site statistics counter is registering a nil value. Or when the site counter is registering more than 30 visitors, with not a single one bothering to write even a single line comment. Blogger blues, if there ever was one.

So what happens next? Just what do bloggers do when they become a victim of blogonliness? Do they really just delete their blogs, vowing never to return? Do they put up a whining post, complaining about lazy bloggers who never bother to make their presence felt? Or do they visit their fellow bloggers’ blogs and threaten them that this would be the last comment they will ever get? Or do they try something totally different and outrageous?

I put up this query on my own blog and received a wide variety of replies. Jahanzaib &lthttp://j-a-h-a-n.blogspot.com/> remarked, “When I first started blogging, I got very few visitors. As a result, I did not write anything for more than a month. But that was just a phase, and thankfully, I get regular visitors now.”

“For me, blogging is not much fun if one is not interacting with intellectual bloggers,” says Hina Aman, who is planning to launch her own blog portal iBlogistan. “I will definitely collapse the day when people stop commenting on my blog or stop replying to comments or answering the questions I post to them in their blogs. I’ll be like that poor soul who keeps saying, ‘Nobody Loves Me’!”

Asma &lthttp://asmamirza.blog spot.com> felt that comments were the bloodline of blogs. “I like comments too. But even if there were no comments on mine, I won’t be giving up my blog. And yeah, spamming other blogs with comments means some commenting back at yours too.”

Blogbelle &lthttp://blogbelle.blogsome.com/> is also a victim of blogonliness. “I want to make a whiny post, and I’m trying to run around commenting, to let others know I’m reading their blogs. It’s selfish to ask people to read mine, but I want them to read and keep me company in the rare occasions that I’ll have to blog.”

Irtiqa &lthttp://certainly-uncertain.blogspot.com> was sure that it wouldn’t matter much if no one was reading her posts. “Still, I might post something under the title, ‘Why isn’t anyone reading my beloved blog’?”

Majaz &lthttp://theblackmirror.blogspot.com> was also not too bothered about the lack of comments on her blog. “However, it is important to me that people I am close to read my blog. And if they stop commenting, or worse reading my blog, I’d write a very caustic post on how the people who are important to you just don’t have the time to give a hoot about what you’re doing in your life,” she clarified.

Tee Em &lthttp://widout-a-name.blogspot.com> narrated a personal experience. “I decided to delete the blog, and posted this idea on my blog just to check whether people were concerned or not. And voila! I found out that there were quite a few who didn’t want me to stop blogging after all. Obviously this was a morale booster.”

On a personal account, there did come a time in my blogging life that I became a victim of blogonliness. The comment counter value seemed glued to zero. And no amount of writing posts which ended with questions, thus deliberately inviting comments, helped improve things.

So, in the end, I wrote a mean post, saying something on the lines of being really tired of it all and may be deleting my blog. There were no replies again.

Then I really logged onto the blogger to delete my blog. For one last time I opened my comment box and voila! There were more than ten replies. My blogger friends were fervently discussing my horrendous commenting service and how to get in touch with me, since I never left my email address.

Imagine my shock, horror and ultimately embarrassment. What was perceived as blogonliness had actually been a problem with the commenting service’s counter code. It goes without saying that I immediately changed my commenting service.

However, there are still many blogs which can be labelled as lonely journals. But that does not mean that one cannot overcome blogonliness. In fact, few easy steps should take care of the problem.

In nine out of ten cases, the root cause of blogonliness is the blogger himself/herself. For example, when you are writing an entry, make sure you make it readable with proper font, correct spelling and grammar, and of course proper paragraphing. Okay, so this is not an English exam but I have seen posts which are so messed up with a mixture of English and Roman Urdu and without any paragraphing, that you cannot blame anyone if they do not read the post.

Also, try writing concise and to-the-point posts. Posts which seem to ramble on and on put off the readers. Plus, update your blog at least once a week. If people continuously visit your blog, only to find some month-old post still on top, they will eventually stop visiting it.

Another put-off factor is the disabling of commenting option. Why would anyone bother reading a post when they know they will not be able to voice their thoughts on it?

Moreover, writing interesting posts, joining blog webrings, and regularly visiting other people’s blogs and leaving intelligent comments will ensure a steady traffic of interested bloggers, and hence, signal an end to blogonliness. As a former blogger puts it very aptly, “It’s not the blog which matters. It’s the blogger who does.”