Wednesday, December 31st, 2008...12:24 am
Wow! The power of blogging
I know I promised my next blog post was going to be about my hopes for journalism in the coming year, but I got a bit sidetracked today. ( I’ll be back to the hopes before the year is out.)
A colleague e-mailed me this morning with the most delightful and unexpected news. Two bloggers, both of whom I respect but don’t know, blogged about little ol’ me. I just started this blog, and, honestly, I am thrilled when I check my stats and find that anyone has read it.
I feel humbled and excited. I started this blog because I really care about journalism and its future, and I’m just intoxicated with what new media can do for it. What happened here is a perfect example.
I regularly read a blog called News After Newspapers. I enjoy it. I think blogger Martin Langeveld is right on about so much about the future of newspapers. Often he puts into words what I wish I had thought of. So I added him to my blog roll. He noticed, contacted me and added me to his.
Then Langeveld blogged about me. Then Tim Windsor blogged about me on Zero Percent Idle. Then Windsor tweeted my blog post about how journalists can use search-engine optimization techniques, and several other people retweeted, which is cool and super helpful in letting a bunch of people know about what your wrote.
What’s fascinating about social media is you can actually see all this unfold. You can view it on twitter at twitter search for my name, Gina Chen, and for savethemedia.
If the power of blogs — along with twitter — could get some folks to read a blog written by a journalist in Upstate New York, imagine what it could do for you?
– Gina
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I'm Gina Masullo Chen, a 20-year veteran newspaper journalist who is a Ph.D. candidate in mass communications. I want to see journalism survive. I believe news organizations need to embrace new media, change their thinking, improve their content and innovate. Read more about me 
11 Comments
December 31st, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Another thing you might want to try is statcounter.com. I’m sure there are lots of other functionalities that do the same thing…
you get to check it every once in a while to see where and when are IP numbers that logged into your blog.
It’s way cool to wake up and find someone in Singapore or Poland spent 55 seconds reading what you wrote.
January 1st, 2009 at 1:48 am
I’ll have to check it out, thanks.
Gina
January 1st, 2009 at 5:00 am
[...] Wow! The power of blogging [...]
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:55 am
[...] Linking creates a conversation: Blogging is a conversation, not a monologue or a lecture. To blog well you need to connect with other bloggers in your niche, share ideas, respond to their posts, get your posts noticed by them. Jeff puts it well: “Links are an act of enlightened self-interest, for it is when you link to others that they discover you and what you have to add. That will get you linked back.” If another blogger links to your blog, you get a shot at that blogger and his or her readers checking out your site. The blogger also may link to your blog in his or her blog roll, so that gives you a continuous potential for new readers from that blogger’s site. (Readers often check out the blogs on the blogroll). If you’re linking to sites relevant to your niche, in time you’ll get links back and create a community that increases your blog traffic. This can happen through conversation or tweets, as I explained in my Wow! The Power of Blogging Post. [...]
January 4th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I second the recommendation to use statcounter–you’ll get all kinds of stats. And I agree–finding out that someone in Dubai or Greenland has been reading your blog is a hoot, as is finding out what search brought them to your blog in the first place.
January 4th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Pam & Michael J:
I did check out statcounter. What fun!
It is so cool to see that people are reading, how long they spend and that they are from so many different countries. What an amazing world we live in, that I blog I’m writing in Syracuse New York could be interesting to someone in Norway.
-Gina
January 12th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Hımm. thank you good text
January 16th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
hmm thanks a lot good text
September 19th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
I did check out statcounter. What fun!
October 29th, 2010 at 10:08 am
Yep, blogging is definitely a good way to get yourself heard. As long as you have the right info (like that posted here) and the determination, and something interesting to say, there’s no reason why you can’t find yourself a large audience interested in what you have to say.
October 29th, 2010 at 11:59 am
I think, too, that a large audience isn’t always what people want or need. Just having an audience is what matters to many. (Unless, of course, you are trying to make money.)
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