Yesterday I hold a speech on Swiss barcamp in Zurich about “Old School blog marketing”. Before this speech I got asked very often “how to connect a blog with facebook or twitter”, “how to get new followers” or “how to make the blog famous”. However, the idea about this talk came when I realized that new bloggers only know the social media platforms from today and that they don’t understand the “old school blog marketing” from the blogosphere existing before facebook and twitter. Right at the beginning of this article I have to write some facts:
- The age of internet began in the beginning of 1990s
- In 1995 I wrote my first e-mail when I was a 13 years old boy
- 2005 facebook was founded
- 2007 I started this blog in German language, because it is my native language
- 2007 twitter was founded
- 2009 I registered my twitter account
Until today I have round about 300 followers; it’s very less because my twitter account is six years old today. But: I have round about 160 blog articles round about 1500 comments in my blog until today. I am absolutely sure I do definitely something wrong in twitter, but I am also sure I handle my blog and treat most of my readers in my blog totally different. I call that difference “old school blog marketing”. If you want to know what that means, you are welcome to read and comment this article.
Disclaimer
Who shouldn’t read this post:
- When you follow my blog for a couple of years, there is no need to read this article, cause you already know everything.
- Every single point in this article is not new. It’s really old. It is old school. Most of the written things in this article are older than facebook. Please don’t waste your time, when you are a well experienced blogger.
- Everything I write here is not suitable for companies or business
- Everything I write here is just my personal thinking and you don’t have to follow my point of view.
Who should read this post:
- If you don’t know RSS, ATOM, feed reader, trackback and the usual etiquette
- If you want to follow some special blogs more effective
- If you want to be at least more independent from twitter or facebook
- If you want to be different to the mass of people
… then you are really welcome to get another (old school) view on the web.
Your blog is your profile
The most important point of view is that the complete internet is it’s own social media. Your profile is your blog. Your blog is part of the social media called blogosphere. That’s the simple basic. Here you write what you want and you can create your own design like you want. Here you are free.
But of course there are some basic differences: It is not allowed to share content from other websites or things you didn’t do on your own; at least you have to think about the licence when you share for example a photo another photographer made. This sounds boring, but when you are really creative, believe me, your blog will be more interesting compare to a facebook page where you share content which is not yours. 
When you just share content of others, sorry for that, but then I prefer not to read your blog; then I prefer to follow the origin creator.
Think about: Why do you want to have a blog? How much time do you want to invest into your blog? Who shall read your content? What’s the main topic you write about?
Write comments or how to get readers
I am sure, you don’t want to get just a follower who just like your post on facebook. What you want is a real reader; so a person who really takes time to read your blog entry. I want that. But maybe you are different.
It’s true: We all have different interests. When you love and write about basketball, I won’t be interested into your blog. But I am sure some others are interested into that topic. When you wrote your first article, it is normal that you won’t be famous the next day. I am sure on twitter or facebook it would be the same. When you wrote your first article in your blog, maybe you know another blog which has got a similar topic compare to your blog. If yes, I’ve got a tip for you: Just comment the other one and link to your own blog.
I just can say: When I get a comment in my blog, that means you are interested into my topic. When I read your comment, of course I follow the link to your blog. And what will I find? Another blog which has got a similar topic then mine. Of course I am interested into your blog and for sure I will read your latest article.
Of course I publish your comment into my blog article, because I really love your feedback. Can you imagine what my readers of my blog are doing, when you wrote a good comment? For sure they want to know who you are. They will follow your link. And what will I find? Another blog which has got a similar topic than mine. And what will they do? Just think about it.
Write a feedback
Above I wrote you should write your own content and create your own topic. But when you read another blog article and you really like it, you can use your own blog to comment that article. In your article you should link the origin blog article. When the other blog use the same technical system (you use for example wordpress and the other blog also does) your blog system will send a trackback to the origin blog article. Then the origin blog article get’s a new comment automatically created by your blog. It’s true: When someone sends you a trackback you are really happy because that means you show your own readers that there is a wonderful blog article they should read. In the other blog the readers usually prefer to follow the trackback, because they realize that this article is important enough that another blogger is writing about that article.
So what happens? Do you agree that you may get new readers for your own blog?
How to follow a blog?
When you get your first comment it is possible that the comment is written by another blogger you commented before. But it is also possible that someone comments your article you never know before and that this commentator has got a blog you’re interested in. So what can you do to follow that blog?
Every day you can use your browser to surf the other blog and look whether there is something new. But you have to confess that this is really ineffective and that you waste your time: Mostly other bloggers don’t write an article every day. You can do it that way when you follow two, three or five blogs, but then it becomes boring.
There is a technical solution for this problem. Today you can follow that blog on twitter. When I began in 2009 to use twitter, most of the people I followed only wrote their new article and a link to it. Today most people use twitter like a chat; they discuss there and retweet the content of others. Are they really interested into your post or about your tweets?
As I wrote above I’ve got round about 300 followers in twitter. On 14th August I wrote my last blog post and I twittered that there is a new post in my blog available. Thanks to twitter I know what happened:
As you can see: 147 twitter followers saw that I spend a lot of time for an article and just three of them were interested to click my blog. Today the social media system outside the blogosphere are too quick in my personal opinion. The people in Twitter only have one question:
- What’s going on?
Answer: Helmut wrote a new blog article. No need to click it, because the question is already answered.
As you can imagine, a real blog outside a social media has got a totally different topic. I just can say mostly I have some more questions:
- Who? How? What? How come? Why? What the hell? etc.
When your followers are interested into more questions than “what’s going on?” they will click your blog. Otherwise they think it’s wasting their time. So, today people use their time to discuss inside twitter because they don’t want to waste time just to click to a blog (no question about to read it).
So in the end, you are right when you say: I use twitter the wrong way. And when you think in this way, let me answer: you are right and I am sorry, but I don’t care about that.
How to really follow a blog?
As you can see, I get nearly no readers via. Twitter. But I have round about 150 blog entries and round about 1500 comments. And I am not in facebook. How come?
In 2007 I installed a plugin called “feed statistics” for wordpress. When I remember correct, at that time five people subscribed my blog. I am absolutely sure there were less than ten people. After register my twitter account I never watched that statistics again. In 2009 the people and other blogs said RSS and ATOM feeds are dead, better use twitter. Yesterday, a few minutes before I started to talk about this “old school blog marketing” I watched the first time again on this statistics plugin. Just see what happened:
As written before, I was really surprised yesterday when I saw this. The people who subscribe a feed from a blog are really interested into the blog and not just into the tweets. So I just can say thank you to my subscribers, that you think such that positive about my blog.
So, if you really want to follow quick and easy other blogs then you should think about a feed reader. You can install them on your computer or you can install them on your own webspace at your host you really trust. I prefer a feed reader on my webspace because I can use it independent from the computer. If you want to put it on your own webspace I can recommend two feed readers:
- Tiny Tiny RSS – free software (like freedom and not free beer) which is not so tiny like it sounds
- fever – which is not free like freedom and it’s also not free like free beer; it cost 30 US-$. I prefer this one, because it is more easy to install and it has got Autoupdates so it is more easy to use while travelling. If you understand German, I wrote an article about and how to install it.
The cool things with these programms is: They search all blogs you’re interested in for you every few minutes. When you visit your feed reader you get a very quick overview what’s going on into your special part of world wide blogosphere. You can organize the feeds also to different groups; so if you’re interested in more than one topic you can put every blog into another group. In my personal point of view, the list-function in twitter is just a bad copy of this functionality.
Create your own blog network
You can use the feeds of your blog to create your own social blog network. For example: Mostly I write about different cultural experiences and my business is travelling. I am sure I am not the only guy who do write about such topics, so at the beginning I asked my personal favourite blogs I read whether they want to join a network about this topic with me. The project was founded in May this year and right now we are nine bloggers writing about cultural difficulties in different cultures. Just nine bloggers, but it’s a beginning and there are not so many blogs writing about that stuff.
- At Check-in you can read the description how that network works
- At the departure you can see the blogs who joined the network
- Inside the transit zone you can see the latest articles of all blogs. Feel welcome to read and comment them.
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If you want to create your own network based on feeds and if you need help, just write me an e-mail. I do my very best to help you. 
If you are a programmer
If you are a programmer and if you understand German I would be very happy when you want to help me to improve the system I wrote above. You can find some more ideas in my German speech I hold on the WordPress camp 2013 in Berlin. Behind last link there is a video from that speech available.
Off topic
Yes, my blog has got a installed robots.txt file from the beginning on. I’ve got my personal reasons why I did and why I still like that. You don’t have to understand that, but please just accept it. And for sure, I know that this is the opposite of marketing.
In the middle of May I’ve installed a statistic program called mint on my webspace to know how many users I have. Here you can see the traffic of my site.
In the end
Until now I’ve used more than 2000 words in this article. It’s a little bit more as you can write on twitter. It’s more than you usually write on facebook. Of course I would be very happy if you take time to comment this article if you want.
And I also have to say, that I am surprised about such big reaction I’ve seen after that speech on twitter. I’ve had more than 60 reactions in less than one hour; it’s my personal twitter record since I have an account there. For me it’s also a little ironic, but until now the only reaction was on twitter. Here my favourite three tweets:
The linked article is really good, so I link it here again:
direct link; personal translation to English:
@dunkelangst googles the web with bloggerei.de … Alta it’s like in the 90s here…
direct link; personal English translation:
@hellosilka @dunkelangst I find this different view very exiting.
I find this very exciting times different view! #barcampCH @StefanVetter I find #attitude also good!
Inside the twitter time line the rest of your tweets will be lost in a couple of days. Do you really need a better reason why to comment a blog?
