by Nathan Stout (of AccordingToWhim.com)
As Duran Duran sang: ‘Is there anyone out there? Anyone else outsideeeeee?’
2011 looks to be going down as the year of the blog here at According To Whim. Chris and I appear to have it almost wrapped up… a blog for EVERY day of the year. The only problem is is that no one seems to notice it. We have busted our asses (or fingers) to get this monumental accomplishment… accomplished.
Chris has become a little distraught (maybe not distraught but I can’t think of the word for it) that the blog has gone so unnoticed. He has given his theory as to why it hasn’t had much at all in the way of viewers. He thinks the blog is too… (wait for it)….. According To Whim. He is right. It is, but when your whole motif is ‘according to whim’ you would expect it to be. The only problem is that people don’t seem to like things ‘according to whim’, they like structure and theme. People are searching for specific subjects like video production, rock bands, video games, movies. We provide all that but that is the problem, we provide ALL of it so there is not enough to keep people interested since they can read a few blogs then move on because there is nothing else that interests them here.
I think that we have come to conclusion (through indirect discussions about it) that 2012 will have more a focused blog. One or two subjects, probably video production or writing. During a talk we had just last night we talked about blogs and it appeared to me Chris was suggesting (even if he didn’t realize it) having multiple, separate blogs. A blog for each theme.
We wouldn’t have to go for the gusto of having a daily blog but a few different blogs where we could post a subject that was to that blog’s theme. I mentioned that I could probably do a Robotech blog since I was about to binge on Robotech in 2012 and could probably have plenty to write about. We could probably have a NetRunner blog since there is stuff you could always write about when it came to NetRunner. We could probably do a game blog too. That is a bit tricky since there are so many different aspects to games: board games, card games, video games, RPGs… we would have to discuss that one further. Chris could easily do a music blog. He has endless things to say about bands and such.
No matter what we decide the blogs would get a post only every once in a while, not a daily dose. Maybe there would be enough variety in the types of blogs that we would wind up writing a blog a day by default (although I am sure that would be hard). If we planned to do that I suspect we would really need to plan out the entire year in advance (with topic brainstorming).
Once we get through 2011 one of the things I thought about doing was to create an index page for the According To Whim blog. Perhaps a final post (that would always be a the main page) which was basically the blogs separated by subject in list format. This would put a cap on the blog (so to speak) and would provide people who just stop by (and not necessarily find us by searching) to quickly glance at the blog as a whole and find something of interest.
What ever the plan is I am sure blogging will still feature prominently in our plans. It is an easy way for us to work together creatively without having to get together often (which is really hard).