Nov | 05 | 2007

Should You Jump Into the Bandwagon?

Posted by Jimmy as Opinion, Writing

I know that title is so vague but “bandwagon” is what comes to mind whenever I hear of a sensational piece of news and then see everyone in the blogosphere writing about it. Take this example. I have a friend online who is always hard at work trying to increase the traffic to her personal blog. She needs this because she needs a certain amount of traffic to get paid per post. So one fateful day, when a shopping mall in her city got blown up – or had an accident, no one knows yet – she posted something about the incident. Guess what happened? Yup, her visitors skyrocketed for the weekend.

Having presented a specific scenario, my question is this: should you join the bandwagon and blog about sensational happenings around you or should you continue with your normal posts?

To be honest, I have no clear cut answer to this question – that is why I am posting this entry. On the one hand, I am thinking that it is perfectly normal to post about the latest piece of news that you can relate to. On the other hand, I have this small voice in me asking whether a person would still blog about the same piece of news if it didn’t mean income coming in due to high traffic.

Yet who are we fooling? We are blogging so that other people can read our posts. High traffic is what we want in the end, right? So why don’t I feel right when I think about doing what everyone else is doing?

Comments (4)

4 Responses

Jaren
05|Nov|2007

well as you said, “jumping on the bandwagon” maybe helpful to get readers and high traffic, and yes we know that there’s a lot of happenings around the world or our specific place, but if we continue to follow the “bandwagon” in the long run we become “generic”, the reason we blog is to different and unique…but it’s not wrong to “jump in the bandwagon” just not too much…
Aaron B. Hockley
05|Nov|2007

I’d say it depends on the theme/focus of the blog. I run a few blogs. One is my random personal musings, which tends not to follow the latest “bandwagon.” On the other hand, I write a blog about Portland-related issues which by its very nature is posting about topics locally in a timely manner… my stats reflect that I get a ton of traffic based on current events.
Jimmy
12|Nov|2007

Thanks for the thoughts guys…Jaren, I was just thinking, when is “too much” too much?
Jaren
13|Nov|2007

Hey Jimmy.. “too much” is either you are actually looking for it or well, you live your life by following the latest hype… I mean “desperately” looking for it. There’s actually nothing wrong with jumping on the bandwagon. It depends on the situation…

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