Bloggers vs. Bloggers

For those that don’t know, I have a couple of blogs.  The one your reading, and “My Sports Obsession”.  Even though this Random blog is older, I have only really been using it the way I am now since February of this year.  While my my sports blog, I’ve used since March of 2011.  Here is some of the differences.

My “Random Thoughts From a Random Guy” blog is a “daddy” blog, a “MS caregiver” blog, a “random” blog, a “humor” blog.

My “My Sports Obsession” blog is what it says, a “sports” blog.  Or more specifically, a “baseball card” blog.

You can see the differences in the graphic above. (Random = 21 page views per post average, Sports Obsession = 47 page views per post average),  The also glaring difference is the followers. 

What differences you don’t see is, my Random blog doesn’t really have a network where as my Sports blog does.  All those followers on the Sports blogs, I have followed their Sports blogs.  In exchange, they follow me.  I comment on their posts, they comment on mine.  I have a lot more interaction on my Sports blog (470 comments) then I do my Random blog (78 comments).  Where as my Random blog, I followed a bunch of “mommy” blogs as well as some “MS caregiver” blogs and got hardly any other followers.  I comment on other blogs as well, and never get any follows.

I’d like to say I don’t care about followers, but we all do to a point.  Having only 7 followers isn’t going to stop me from publishing because I do that for myself.  But it’s nice to know your being heard.  And I realize I don’t have gripping stories and amazing content so it doesn’t hurt my feelings at all.  I also know I have some followers who don’t actually click the follow button because they are regular commenters as well.  So that number is deceiving as well.

Another big difference is the trust.  And I think this is where the sex of the blogger comes into play.  The bloggers in the Random network are mostly female, but the Sports network bloggers are mostly male.  The majority of the Random bloggers don’t post pictures or use real names.  The majority of the Sports bloggers use their real names.  Family pictures don’t really come into play for that network.  Even e-mail addresses on the blogger profile are different.  If someone leaves a comment on my Random blog, I have to leave a reply on their reply which with the new blogger set up, means that they don’t receive it unless they come back and check it.  But with the Sports blog, I get a comment, I can reply to most via e-mail because they aren’t hidden.  When I reply via e-mail, it usually turns into a conversation.  So I have developed more relationship’s with my Sports bloggers.

I have developed friendships on my Sports blog, and I don’t see that happening with the Random blog.  I do have a few people who I comment on their blogs and they comment on mine so I do have somewhat of a relationship with a few.  In all fairness, there is a lot more interaction off of the Sports blog because of trading, and we all have one major factor in common, sports cards.

I often feel like an outsider on this blog, but I don’t on my sports blog.  And I realize that some of that is because this blog wear’s a lot of different hats “daddy” “random” “humor” “MS” so I don’t have the regular following, but I don’t feel like having 4 or 5 different blogs.  I have thought about it, but I would rather just keep it all together.  So I guess I am my own problem.

But that’s fine, this post wasn’t about begging for friends or followers.  It was just to show the differences between the blogs.  I think the network that I try to have with this blog, could learn a lot from the network of my sports blog.