Quite a few of us having writing blogs or fantasy blogs, or a combination of both. Some of us even have links to one another's blogs in our sidebars. But according to my stats, these never get clicked.
I just read an article about recommendation sites. You know how when you've finished a movie on Netflix it recommends some others? And at the end of a post on The Mary Sue it suggests some more posts? Well, I want to do that. Now, I don't know if this can be automated and frankly, I don't want to automate it, I want it to be a community thing we choose to support, but here's what I propose:
Those of us with blogs post a list of blog posts we've published, with a brief summary of the content of the post. Once a few of us have done this, we can start reading each others' summaries and then, if there's something there relevant to or related to one of our existing blog posts in the lists of others' posts, we add at the bottom of the blog post "Related: [link] (by [author])".
So I've got a Show vs Tell piece on my blog. I might therefore in the related section at the bottom link to three other bloggers' Show vs Tell articles. I've got a post about why monarchies are so popular in fantasy, so I might link to a post by one of you listing the five coolest monarchs in fantasy novels, or one looking at fantasy novels with other forms of government.
What this will hopefully achieve is to give mutual support between us writers with blogs where we share our readership and promote one another passively. It also provides lots of cross-links which, if I recall how these things work correctly, will boost our Google search rank or something.
So who's in? And does anyone know of some software or a website we can use to organise it?
I just read an article about recommendation sites. You know how when you've finished a movie on Netflix it recommends some others? And at the end of a post on The Mary Sue it suggests some more posts? Well, I want to do that. Now, I don't know if this can be automated and frankly, I don't want to automate it, I want it to be a community thing we choose to support, but here's what I propose:
Those of us with blogs post a list of blog posts we've published, with a brief summary of the content of the post. Once a few of us have done this, we can start reading each others' summaries and then, if there's something there relevant to or related to one of our existing blog posts in the lists of others' posts, we add at the bottom of the blog post "Related: [link] (by [author])".
So I've got a Show vs Tell piece on my blog. I might therefore in the related section at the bottom link to three other bloggers' Show vs Tell articles. I've got a post about why monarchies are so popular in fantasy, so I might link to a post by one of you listing the five coolest monarchs in fantasy novels, or one looking at fantasy novels with other forms of government.
What this will hopefully achieve is to give mutual support between us writers with blogs where we share our readership and promote one another passively. It also provides lots of cross-links which, if I recall how these things work correctly, will boost our Google search rank or something.
So who's in? And does anyone know of some software or a website we can use to organise it?
Auror
Troubadour
