A Forum For Interaction - The Key to a Successful Blogger

The are millions of blogs in existence, yet many of them are locked in invisibility, consumed by the vastness that is the Internet. To have a strong readership of your blog, you should aim to have the following elements - high quality commentary, consistent postings, content appealing to at minimum a niche subset of the population, and a forum for interaction. People have gotten lucky by being the first one to "catch the wave" of a newly-developing fad, but most of these blogs have transient readership.

I believe that the last element - forum for interaction - is extremely vital to a blog's success. In our Media 2.0 world, it is no longer good enough to offer a one-way direction in our commentaries; old media formats, such as newspapers and even television, are behind the times in allowing for reader response. With the advent of YouTube and Twitter, television is becoming more viewer response-friendly, but you must remember that these responses are still filtered at some level.

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas pioneered this two-way form of communication (i.e. - blogosphere) and transformed this medium into an effective model for two-way communication. I must profess that I frequent this blog much, so obviously I have a favorable opinion of it, but it is simple fact that a majority of the most followed bloggers on that website are not "front pagers" (Daily Kos terminology for salaried staff bloggers) but instead effective and influential community activists, authors, and even scientists. Most of these people were, pardon my harshness here, nobody of importance until they happened to fall upon this Media 2.0 format. These people were not the Founding Fathers of this movement, and yet they have gained so much influence that they meet with Congresspeople regularly to discuss important issues. Clearly, this improved access demonstrates the power of the Media 2.0 movement.

Bloggers like nyceve, bonddad, and teacherken are successful because they adhere to the elements for success above. The write well, they post almost on a daily basis, they each have a specific topic of focus (health care, U.S. financial system, teaching/history, respectively), and they all utilize the forum for interaction provided by the overall Daily Kos site.

I don't mean to make this a pro bono advertising session for Daily Kos, but clearly the results of these successful bloggers point to the extreme importance for a two-way form of communication. Each one of these individuals can fulfill three of the four success elements on their own, but without the forum for interaction, the chances that all of them, or even one of them, would be as influential and followed are severely lessened.

That's why the concept of blogs as a medium format is so revolutionary. Even though two-way communication is a fundamental part of our existence as humans, a la relationships, it is often antithesis to the goals of journalism ("just the facts, ma'am") or even editorials ("I'm right, you're wrong"). If anything, the reason why Media 2.0 has been so successful is because it's simply reuniting us with our human nature.

My message here is that I want you to participate in this blog. Though this blog is inherently about me and my experiences, values, and opinions, if you have a different perspective about something or a different experience, I want to hear it. It's why I enjoy posting links on Facebook, because I can reach a strong list of potential readers who can share their own thoughts.

So I eagerly invite you to participate in this blog. Post comments right to my posts. Email me comments. Twitter me comments. If you have your own blog, make a a post about my post, with your added thoughts. As I've demonstrated above, the two-way Media 2.0 communication form is vital to a blog's success, so feel free to write me comments back in my direction. Otherwise, how else can I improve on success elements one through three?

Cheers,

Mike C.