Resolutions for November

Thinking about what I want to do for the rest of the year I have decided to put painting at the top of my list.  I have done almost none this year and would really like to get a couple of smaller projects moving.

I will ‘fund’ that time by reducing the amount of time I spend on the internet.  No real reduction in blogging (writing and reading) more the time on forums, facebook and the like.  I should be able to liberate an hour a day for painting I would think.  I will come up with a target for November, post it here, and see how I get on.

One other resolution.   A number of bloggers have commentated recently about blogging stats.  Most agree that the two most important are followers and comments and I would tend to agree.  I can’t do much about the followers but I will make an effort to comment more regularly and hope that others reciprocate.

First Post to get to 1000 pageviews

http://leadwarriordavek.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/blogging-and-linking-to-forums.html

A blogging milestone - about blogging itself appropriately enough!

The next milestone I am looking for is 100 followers, at which point I will do a giveaway

Blogging and Linking to Forums

I often provide a link to blog posts on forums that I am a member of where I think there will be interest.  I normally include a 1 – 2 sentence summary of what the post is about. There has recently been a thread on the Lead Adventure Forum where a number of posters objected to this practice (in general not targeting me specifically) although others defended it.  It made me ask myself the question why do I do it?

The obvious answer is to reach more people.  There are about 3500 members of the Lead Adventure forum against the 55 followers that I currently have on my blog.

Ah, came the reply, but surely it would be very easy to copy and paste blog posts into forums?  This would allow forum readers to read and comment on it without needing to follow the link to the blog. The only reason for putting a link in is to publicise your blog and get more page hits.

This argument threw me a bit, until I realised the truth of it.  I do like to get blog hits and value comments on the blog more than comments made in a forum.  Having given it a bit more thought I then realised I don’t see anything wrong with that (although others obviously do).  Part of blogging is posting, but the equally significant part is feedback which includes post count.  It lets me know when people have found a topic interesting.  I feel good about a topic that gets some comments and lots of attention.  Also people that follow a link to my blog may well have a look at some of the other topics I have posted.  So after careful consideration I came to the conclusion that I am happy with what I do (which is always within the rules of the forums that I visit) and see no need to change.

I would be interested in other bloggers thoughts on this, whether or not you also link to forums and if so where on the spectrum of title and link to full copy and paste you sit.