Dr Tanya of Salted Caramel provides a quote about blogging every week. This one is short and sweet.
” Successful blogging is not about one time hits. It’s about building a loyal following over time. ” —
David Aston
As usual I had no idea who the writer of this quote was. I hardly ever recognise them. I looked him up and discovered that, if I got the right David Aston, he is a Scottish actor and writer. I have to admit to being a bit wary of young “influencer” type bloggers, the sort who write posts about how I ‘ve been doing certain things wrong all my life. I don’t feel I have very much in common with them.
I do agree with this quote. Our blogs have built up a loyal following over the years. It does, as Dr Tanya commented, feel more like a community and to me that is more important than having the odd post go viral. Sure, it’s fun to open up WP and find that a particular post got 500 views instead of the normal twenty or thirty (for this blog), but that doesn’t mean that those readers will come back regularly or even that they read the whole thing. They might not even be real people.
We all measure success in different ways. For some it might be about the stats or perhaps about having posts go viral and being featured elsewhere on social media. For others it’s about “promoting their brand.” Writers want the satisfaction of being able to express themselves. I think that David Aston’s comment would hold true for most types of bloggers though.
Links:
While looking up David Aston’s career I discovered that he’d been in many British TV shows I’m familiar with including an ongoing role in a favourite of mine, “Hamish McBeth”.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0039200/#writer
Our Other Blog: Two Sisters and Two Points of View 
I saw that show too! We have one of the Brit networks for a while, so we watched everything British, Scottish, Irish, Australian, New Zealand. But not Canada. They don’t seem to use the same networks.
I feel these days that I’m more than a little over-committed. It’s not that I want to stop blogging. I don’t want to stop. I just need to save some time to be just private. I still find that I’m always doing something for the blog unless I’m feeding birds, cleaning, cooking, eating, or in asleep. I finally did a few drawings today just to make sure I remembered how (I did), but by then it was already late and I was up early and now it’s very late again and this is how I never get enough sleep.
So somehow, I need to find a way to balance my life better. No one is pushing me but ME — but I still feel pushed. Who knew retirement could be so exhausting?
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I know, we should have all the time in the world but somehow we don’t.
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I must admit that I choose the quotes without giving much thought to where they originated unless they are by a name that I recognise.
Thank you for providing the info on David Aston.
Also, I completely agree with your views about the quote.
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I had another look and I think I might not have got the right guy as I misspelled his name but the actor was interesting anyway.
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No worries.
It’s the quote that’s important.
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