Community Blog-Reading?

Here’s a good idea, Chuck West­brook sug­gests star­ting a sort-of, com­mu­nity blog-reading circle, to help all of the blog­gers with great con­tent, but no readers.

I think it’s a great idea.. Here’s his post:

How You Can Help End the Pro­blem of Blogs With Great Con­tent and No Readers

by CHUCK on OCTOBER 23, 2008
There is a sim­ple way to dis­co­ver under-appreciated blogs and help them reach the audience they deserve. In fact, with no spe­cial effort and in one fell swoop, you can now find these sites and reward the crea­tor in a power­ful way.
Here are the problems:

Great Con­tent but No Audience

There are a ton of bri­lliant blogs that are being read by almost no one. Some authors give up for lack of rea­ders. Others con­ti­nue to pro­duce cle­ver, insight­ful pie­ces that remain hope­lessly buried and fore­ver unap­pre­cia­ted.
An Audience Hun­ting for Great Con­tent to Read
If the blogs with the best con­tent always rose to the top, rea­ders wouldn’t have any trou­ble fin­ding them. But that doesn’t hap­pen, so ins­tead, it takes either luck or a lot of work to dis­co­ver good new blogs.
Seems like it’d be easy to fix; they want to be con­nec­ted to one another. Right now, though, there’s not a great way to make that hap­pen. Unless…

**THE BIG IDEA**: Ending the Tra­gedy of Under-Appreciated Blogs

This is a pro­blem we can do something about without too much trou­ble. Here’s what I’m thinking.

Gather some nice blog­gers who believe in hel­ping good con­tent rise. The more the merrier. This beco­mes our group for the pro­ject.
A good, lesser-known blog is cho­sen. Ever­yone in the group will read that blog for two weeks.
At the end of the two weeks, the group moves to another blog to read.
With sco­res of blog­gers focu­sed on a par­ti­cu­lar blog, the author should see many nice things hap­pen over those two weeks, espe­cially if the blog really is a hid­den gem. This inc­lu­des dis­cus­sions, traf­fic, cons­truc­tive cri­ti­cism, encou­ra­ge­ment, and con­nec­ting to some of the blog­gers in the group. That author then joins the group and we move along and do it again.

Crazy Big Potential

Pic­ture what suc­cess might look like. What if we get hun­dreds of blog­gers pla­ying along? What if blog­gers like Seth or Dooce or other ico­nic blog­gers join in?

Ima­gine how it would feel to have those num­bers and those peo­ple loo­king at your blog after it’s been frus­tra­tingly quiet for months. It would be tre­men­dous. That blog­ger would be per­ma­nently bols­te­red, and it would all be because of the strength of their con­tent, and anything that allows blog­gers that focus fully on con­tent to suc­ceed is great for the medium.

It Begins Here

How well this takes off will hinge on how well I’ve explai­ned the idea and whether you decide to play along. Par­ti­ci­pa­ting is so easy and the bene­fit to blog­gers and rea­ders could be tremendous–you really can’t lose.

All you’d have to do is:

Com­ment below to express your inte­rest in par­ti­ci­pa­ting.
Be willing to add only one new blog’s worth of rea­ding to your life. This will be a dif­fe­rent blog every two weeks.
With so little requi­red and such great pos­si­bi­li­ties, why not try? Ins­tead of analy­zing and get­ting everything right up front, let’s just take the first few steps and see where that takes us.

Again, there’s no risk here. There’s no angle. It’s just a pro­mi­sing idea.

Let’s Get Started

Just com­ment below, and I’ll email you with further ins­truc­tions. Maybe we’ll make a ban­ner to give out, set up a spe­cial blog, and set up an RSS feed that will change the chan­nel every two weeks. We can get sophis­ti­ca­ted later. Let’s just get star­ted now.

Oh, and send others in this direc­tion too. I’m not going to load this with links. If the idea is good, help me spread it. That’s the spi­rit of this whole pro­ject anyway.

We’ll try to get a bit of momen­tum gathe­red while the final details are set up, and then I’ll reach out again.

****Bonus****

Ins­tead of com­men­ting below to express inte­rest, post a link to this post on your blog. This will help things spread, and then we’ll choose one of the peo­ple who do this to be the first blog the group reads for two weeks.

Just make sure it shows up under the track­backs (which appear right above the com­ments sec­tion) OR link to your post in the com­ments section.

****Soo­ner is Bet­ter****
I men­tio­ned that we’ll pro­bably get a little ban­ner for those who par­ti­ci­pate in the group. Well, your ban­ner will have the num­ber corres­pon­ding to the order in which you replied pro­ving that you sig­ned on before it was cool. Move fast, so you can show your friends that you MADE it cool.

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