September 18, 2009

• Featured Grownups: "How to Resurrect FG"

  

  I've been a member of the "Grownups With Content Worth Being Featured" blogring since August of 2005. Back when the only way to get "featured" on the front page of Xanga was to accumulate a lot of "eprops", some "older" Xangans (compared to the "youngsters" which populated the front pages at the time) had the idea to create a participatory blogring to stimulate great writing, promote cross blog traffic, and get these blogs featured. Recently, I stopped particpating in the topics, which I felt were getting a bit stale, and because I was frustrated with the lack of reciprocal participation. I'm back writing an entry today after seeing the latest prompt from the blogring's blogsite, to "Offer ideas about how to resurrect Featured Grownups". On May 16, after my last FG post, I wrote a comment detailing my frustration with the blogring. When this topic was posted a few days ago, I left another comment detailing some ways to "fix the site". Without going into a lot of what I wrote in those comments, which can be read by clicking the above links, I just want to offer an overview for my "topic post".

  1. Writer's Groups don't seem to be as popular as they once were. When Xanga's "Featured Question" appeared, I seemed to noticed the participation in blogrings dropped precipitously. I ran a participatory blogring from 2005-2008 called the Internet Island. (link to the blogsite with the topics) I stopped writing topics for that ring when the participatory entries dropped to the single digits. Other groups to which I belonged, including FG, seemed to be less popular. In order to stimulate the popularity again, I think perhaps the management of the group should make more of an attempt to 'recruit' new members who are first and foremost writers who are looking for more exposure.

  2.Do the blogring members know the intent of FG, and has it changed since the beginning? Here is the text of the blogring's intent:

  "Tired of the Featured Content selection here on Xanga? This ring is for people whose writings are WORTH the time reading, and for those who like to read them. Come on in...laugh, cry, get mad, feel better. It's all here. PLEASE be sure to subscribe to the Featured_Grownups site so that you stay up to date with blogring events and announcements! "

  For the first entry I created back in 2005 (the topic was "My Hometown" and generated 58 comments on my entry, still one of the top amounts I've ever received) Denise ("p8indme" closed down), the blogring leader, and I believe the founder, wrote:

  "When you have posted your blog, leave a comment...I will link to your site so that everyone can see your "masterpiece".WE WANT TO MAKE FEATURED CONTENT WITH THIS!!I'd like to see EVERYONE  that posts make Featured.  HERE are your instructions!1.) Check back...for updates!  2.) Go to the sites...!3.) LEAVE PROPS...!!!We can only be Grownups with Content WORTH being FEATURED if everyone works together here.  There are 253 people to date in the blogring.  All that's needed to make FC is about 40 Props usually, which means 20 comments...QUICKLY!  We can do this, and take over Featured."

  We did make Featured, both with the blog topic entry on the FG site, and for our individual posts. Many times. Most of the times I've been "featured" were because of FG posts.

  3. Membership needs to be refined. When I was running a Poetry Group on Yahoo, I belonged to a group for group leaders. It was noted that only 10-15 percent of the membership of any given group was going to be participating at any given time. Featured Grownups has 1016 members. A quick look at the recent posts of this membership shows that 132 posted in the last week, 38 in the week previous, 30 for the first week of September. 60 of the members haven't posted since August. About 100 haven't posted since May. Another 100 haven't posted since before May! A whopping 546 (that's over half the membership) haven't posted since 2008! So 200 members have posted this month, and FG has had an average of under 10 entries. This is only about 5 percent of the members.

  4. Reciprocation is a must for this group. After I got those 58 comments, I relished my participation in the FG.  I love getting comments, and I picked up more and more subscribers with each succeeding FG topic entry. I always attempt to visit and comment  each and every participant, and I update my progress in a comment on the FG post. In the last year or so, it seems that I was getting less and less comments, and as I'd visit and comment on the later posts, I'd notice that the "early posters" didn't comment on hardly any of the later entries.

  5. The topics must be "universal". There seem to have been too many "holiday" and "season" prompts. The internet is a world wide medium, and sometimes Americans seem to forget that people writing from other countries do not celebrate the same holidays or experience the seasons at the same time. It is a bear to write topical, universal writing prompts. I know from experience. I was always afraid to repeat myself when writing prompts. Interesting note. Newer FG members might like to write about "older" topics but older members would feel they were repeating themselves. Why not dispense with topics altogether some months? Maybe the management could ask members to post some of their better blogs that didn't get much exposure the first time around?

  6. Limit the topic to once a month. I don't know if this would change anything. I seem to have found the twice a month amount to be too many, but this might just be me. It seems that after thinking over the topic for a while, sometimes a week, I'd post right as a new topic was getting underway. Perhaps when the amount of participting members was larger, there was a need for two posts a month, but I like to take my time, and once a month might give more people the time to discover the prompt and to create their posts.

  I really love this group, and have volunteered, in the comment I posted on the topic earlier in the week, to help as much as I can to stimulate and "resurrect" this group. There have been four blogring leaders since I joined in 2005. We have a new "leader", Wendi (radicalramblings) as of yesterday. Reading her response to this topic makes me think that perhaps she might inject some needed "oomph" into the group. She is quite opinionated on her own blog, but from some of what she wrote about the method of formulating topics for FG, perhaps she might come up with some great prompts.

  I am still somewhat peeved by the response I got when I last posted for the group. Out of 17 posts, only 7 of the participating members left me a comment. That's less than half , and that's unacceptable to me. Especially since I wrote rather long comments and thought I was getting to know new Xangans, and friended them when the request came up on my screen. I don't consider this to be a "real" FG topic, so I won't really care about comments on this particular entry. The banner has already been passed as I write this, and I don't know how many of the few readers I have left care about reading an entry about fixing a failing blogring. However, if any of you are members of the FG, and haven't posted a topic for them in a while, let's hope that the new ones will be universal, interesting, and not rehashes of older topics on which I have already written numerous times! Personally, I'd love to see 58 comments on one of my entries again!!

  • 11:02 am
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