Blog Events: Blogging A to Z Wrap Up

First, I want to officially thank Lee at Tossing it Out for coordinating the Blogging A to Z which you possibly noticed I participated in during the month of April. I am a hard worker who loves to participate in... well, pretty much anything (you know... the FOMS—for the uninitiated, FOMS-Fear of Missing Something—is my primary psychological disorder... after the insanity thing...) But I am NOT organized enough to set such things up myself, so I REALLY appreciate those organized folks out there who do this. So THANK YOU, LEE!



FOMS aside, I want to sing the praises of these events for a couple OTHER reasons.



Blog event participation does something in a way UNEQUAL to any other thing you can do: it increases your traffic and followers. Not every person/blog is going to meet every OTHER person's interest, but these events that give you a list of blogs to try out and people to meet, have seemed to be the most efficient method of testing things out OUT there.

I began blogging last June (I'm about 6 weeks shy of my anniversary). At FIRST I asked my writer friends to check it out... and had 10ish followers... then I asked my HPANA friends (the people who have read my fan fiction—my earliest first readers) and built to about 20 or 25 followers. Other followers have trickled in one at a time, with only TWO exceptions. NaBloWriMo (which, innuendo desires aside, is NOT actually a month of writing about... okay, never mind... I won't go there...) It is National Blog Writing Month where people committed to blogging every single day in October. Followers bumped greatly.



Okay... there was a small batch from participating in ABNA—but I think only about five of those have stuck... they are a smart group, and I consider many of them friends, but more of them are on Facebook than this blog circuit.  Largely, with a few exceptions, they don't quite GET the blog thing.



But the BIGGIE was this Blogging A to Z. In April, a single month, I went from 70 followers to over 100. Now I know not ALL of these are A to Z related—a few friends have discovered blogging, and a few new people have been met—but that... maybe 5 people... is the exception. MOST of these are because of participating in this event.

So what's the big deal with followers?



Well I think you KNOW I have world domination aspirations, but aside from that... each becomes a degree of separation from THEIR readers, so the more people you reach directly, the more people you might reach INDIRECTLY.



But that's not the only benefit.



I've managed this month to meet a handful of kindred spirits and a BUNCH of really nice people. These kindred spirits out in the blogosphere though, are a very special reward for this usually solitary thing we do. I don't want to name people, as if I forget anybody, I would feel badly (and forgetting is sort of a specialty of mine), but seriously—there are some majorly cool people that have become NOT just part of the network, but friends.





So to everyone I met in April, YOU ROCK.



I want to encourage anyone new to blogging to participate in these things when they come around. I have a long time friend who has been a beautiful blogger in the past, but shy and not terribly frequent, but this month Marjorie SHONE (shined? I think shone is right)... I think her craft grew a lot with the discipline of the daily thing and I KNOW her readership grew. So it is FABULOUS for more timid bloggers.



And I think it helps ALL of us to grow the network... reach more people... it is only by reaching more that we find the truly fabulous matches out there... the people we want to read daily, the people who might help us out when we GET THERE.





And... this just in: 5 days to HURRAY HURRAY the 8th OF MAY!!!! (I will explain Friday, so you have a chance to prepare)--or if you are very naughty, you can google it.



This just in:  Hey, lookie what I got!  Thank you Raquel!  *note to self:  need to do awards...*