Finally, Television Teaches Me Something About Blogging
Does anyone remember what TV was? Sure we still have television set, and yes programs are still being played on it, but is it really TV? I remember a day before Jerry Bruckheimer and Mark Burnett destroyed the boob tube.
Nowadays there is rarely a point when I can set down, relax my brain and veg out in front of the TV. I am stuck with choosing between reality TV, a crime show, or a medical drama, or some combination of the 3- Not much creativity there.
From what I can tell, there is only one good thing that has come from this new era of television, and of course I have found a way to relate it to blogging.
Yesterday I was watching an episode of Star Trek the Next generation. Yes and I am a dork, and I enjoy a
good sci-fi here and there (but just to set the record straight for all you other dorks out there that are asking the question: Yes I prefer Star Wars over Star Trek). So there I was sitting there watching something from the ‘Golden Age’ of television, having a fantastic time. I tell you, if it were not for syndication I would not be watching very much TV at all. So I decided to watch an episode of Star Trek TNG, as I hadn’t watched it in quite some time. I get all hyped and start humming along with the main theme, it gets to the show and my excitement comes to a screeching halt. I find that I am watching an episode that is titled: “Shades of Grey.” SO why am I upset at this?
It’s a flashback episode.
For those of you that do not remember this aspect of the older version of TV, it is when a studio essentially cheaps out and decides to shoot a little bit of new stuff but manages to work in a bunch of clips from previous episodes. Sometimes these episodes were great, especially if you didn’t really watch the show all that much, it gave you a chance to get an idea of what other episodes were about. This was a great way to see if you would enjoy a show or not. Of course if you had seen this most episodes before, then chances are you would change the channel.
I turned off the TV and started to think about blogging.
I realized that this concept could by used for blogging as well. Why not create a flashback post that is still engaging but points your readers in a few direction to some of your classic and most popular posts. Back before I lost my blogging powers, I had written a bunch of great posts, and quite often I get sad that no one really goes through the archives and reads some of the awesome stuff that I have done. That’s where the flashback post comes in:
You can take people on a fantastic journey right to the very beginning of your blogging adventure and hopefully have them read through all of your posts and get caught up (much like how people watch TV these days, you purchase the episodes on DVD and then start at the beginning and work your way to the end). A lot of blogs you can’t read from start to finish because it is usually just a bunch of advice randomly splattered throughout the blog. The difference with the Living on Adsense Blog is that it is a story, a journey from day one of blogging.
You can point out interesting posts you made about feeling ill and then not posting for weeks and your readers assumed you were dead, or direct people to the first time you made a few cents with Adsense, and you cried.
The other great benefit of this is that it brings your RSS subscribers to your actual blog instead of just reading the post in their Feed Reader. I quite often here of bloggers getting upset because people just go to their reader and never visit the blog. Well, these flashback posts are a great way, if done correctly, to get people to come your actual blog and start reading some of your best work. I know the first time I used this method is saw that for that day the amount of time people stayed on my blog and the number of pages they visited really increase. This is a great tool, especially if you have written some great content in the past, but today you just can’t crank out a stellar post.
I am curious to see how other people have used this method. If you decide to write a flashback post please leave a comment below and a link to the post you wrote so we can all check it out!
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Comments
I used to write a weekly wrestling column that not only was published on various wrestling sites but also an impressive mailing list that I had built up.
Once or twice a month I would send the people on my mailing list an extra couple of columns which were old columns that I thought people might enjoy reading again.
I can see how something like this would be good for blogging. 
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A flashback post, or a post of a similar type, where links are made to older material, is beneficial to do every so often, so as to remind people of past material they may have forgotten, and to let new readers know about high-quality content that is not showing up on new pages. This is great to do as you have done, with the links being peppered through multiple paragraphs of connected writing.
Armen Shirvanians last blog post..Much Of What You See Is Engineered
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@Taylor: …and it would be a shame because all my good stuff was written 8 months ago!
@Dean Saliba: That’s a great idea. I subscribe to a few blogs that do that as well. ps Did you check out the new Hulk Hogan wrestling show?
@ Armen Shirvanian: And its also good to try and invoke a bit of curiosity as well when adding in the links.
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Another good thing about linking to older posts within your blog is that when sploggers steal your content by publishing your rss feed to their blog, if by chance they get any readers, it’s another link to entice them to visit you and a good opportunity to steal your traffic back from the sploggers. (you should always have a link to your site in the footer of every post in your rss feed!)
You might as well take advantage of the free advertising in any way that you can, whenever you can, since you really can’t stop them from stealing your content. (you get rid of one and 10 more pop up to take his place, and before long you are spending more time chasing after sploggers with DMCA notices, than blogging)
apps last blog post..Add a TwitThis Button to your Blogger posts
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@app: Exactly! It’s better to use the evil powers of sploggers against themselves. You can’t stop them so find creative ways to benefit from their theft.
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Good point. Would be a shame for some well written and really engaging posts to get buried in the archives because they were written some time ago. At least this is a way to more or less smoothly bring them back. And it’s especially great for a blog which has been around for a long time.
Taylors last blog post..Taylor Vaifanua
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