Following an influx of new visitors to my personal blog over the last 24 hours, I have been taking on Darren Rowse’s advice (he of ProBlogger fame), and reaching out to those who have taken the time to comment.
After completing some freelance obligations, last night was spent almost entirely reading blog posts, writing comments, visiting twitter profiles, and requesting Facebook friendships.
The evening became an affirmation of the seductive power of an audience - by the time I had finished my “grand tour” it was 2am. Somehow I managed to scrape myself out of bed this morning at 7am, shovel some cereals into my face, make the kids breakfast, make my better half a cup of tea, let the chickens out, and trundle off to work.
Something has been niggling away at the back of my mind all day though - the amount many people don’t share on the internet. I would have love to find each and every commenter on Twitter and Facebook, and connect with them - and dug through their blogs (almost every commenter had a blog) looking for links. In a couple of cases I even did searches for their name.
It seems odd to me that so many people would take the time to share wonderful writing, thoughts, views and opinions, and then provide so few ways that readers might connect with them. While I know that I’m definitely not the norm (go look at my contact and links pages - I make every way possible to get hold of me public), it surprises me that so many people leave no way of getting in touch beyond public comments to their blog.
What am I saying? Perhaps that in order for others to be able to reach out and find you, you need to open up enough to make yourself discoverable.