Will Your Blog Survive Without Social Sites?

Posted by Hyder on June 21st, 2007

Prior to social networking sites there were not many ways of getting free traffic to your blogs. Except for traffic exchanges and buying traffic, which was mostly worthless. Back then, and I’m talking 2000 - 03, blogs grew on the basis of word of mouth, content and search engines. Front page digg, popular in del.icio.us, stumbled etc… meant nothing, now it’s like a crowning achievement to get bookmarked, tagged, made popular and all sorts of idioms attributed to these sites.

Most of the popular bloggers today owe their sudden spikes in traffic to social sites, subsequently leading to some readers that stuck with them after. I will also give credit to their content, because it’s on the basis of that which helped them virtually became overnight stars. But LUCK has a huge part to play in it as well. Note: Any blogger will also testify that the traffic generated from social sites doesn’t “stick”. They all swear by the search engines though, me too.

So now that you have your popularity, Will your blog survive without social sites? Some bloggers don’t need them anymore and can sustain themselves, thanks in part to their content. But a lot of social sites have many one hit wonders that get the popularity meter way up even if it is for one or two articles in their entire blogging lifetime.

Writing content just to attract those initial spikes in traffic is a good idea to get started, provided you can pull it off. But aiming to sustain a blog solely on the back of social sites is probably not a good idea. Sure your friends can digg it for you, stumble it, bookmark and tag it etc…but you need to move out of that realm and make an impact with your content.

While it is also true that sometimes you may think your content is of the best quality, 8 out of 10 times it will largely go unnoticed. Why? Because there is just too much going on at the same time or it is simply a case of hit and miss.

If you experience too many hits and misses you will eventually stop believing in the power of social networks. Guess what happens next? You will then slowly start losing interest in your blog itself and the content you, hopefully, love to create. So if you are looking for an immediate boost in ego and an even faster dump in it then write content with “Amazing” “Never before seen” titles and content, success not guaranteed. If you are looking for a sustained development of your content creation prowess then DON’T write solely for a bookmark, tag, stumble or digg.