Amusing the Muse

Hmm! I was searching for some documents on the computer and came across this one! Apparantly, this was written a long time ago, for the purpose of posting it on my blog...and somehow, it hadn't been published! Well, better late than never. And now that the context is set, read on how I propose to make my blog popular...er...at your cost!

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Spent some time this morning searching on the web on how to make my blogspot more popular and well read. Which is really funny, considering I discovered “blogs” precisely two days ago. That is not to say I hadn’t known anything at all about them before that. I had always known, vaguely I must admit, of the existence of such things as blogs, just as one is marginally aware of the rather intriguing lifecycle of the American cicada, which pupates for 17 years but lives for just a day as an adult. But, I wasn’t really interested in them. The blogs, I mean, not the cicadas.

Going through some blogs as that of VP Jaiganesh, I found myself being inspired, and before I knew it, I had signed up and was the proud owner of my own blogspot. The Valley of the Muse was all well and good, but what was I to put up there? The Muse, obviously pleased with my devotion to her, decided to help, and up came two blogs, in quick succession, one for each day. And with that for an excuse – namely having two blogs to my credit – I actually felt justified in wanting my blog to be popular and attract more traffic. Rather funny how the mind works, what?

Anyway, there I was, embarking on the search for tips to popularize my blogs. The exercise, I must admit, was worth the effort. I found a few well-written articles with their little nuggets of wisdom. Advertise, said one. Sign up to this engine, notify that website of updates, tweak your settings to do this and then that – I followed every instruction dutifully. Then came the difficult part – the instructions on writing your blogs to attract readers. Post frequently, said one author. Yes, but don’t post nonsense frequently, amended another. Allow your posts to make sense more often. Fair enough, I agreed, till I came upon a third. No one is perfect, said this wise philosopher, so don’t wait till you produce the Booker Prize winning entry. Just post what you think is good enough.

Finally I found an interesting suggestion. Go and leave comments on other people’s blogs, said the entry. Now that, I said to myself, is an easy and interesting exercise. Read random blogs (the Navbar does a good job of picking up random blogs, anyway) and leave your comments.

So that is what I am going to do for the next few days. I am going to visit fellow bloggers and leave my comments, hopefully tempting them to return the favour.