Comics Z-To-A
Posted by Paul O'Connor
Well, that’s that! A month of daily content at Longbox Graveyard.
Comics A-To-Z was half-gimmick/half-sincere attempt to jumpstart this blog (and my blogging habits). I rate it … a half-success!
WHAT WORKED
Views!
Daily content goosed my views here at Longbox Graveyard. Even with a short month, February 2018 is tracking to be my best month since November of 2016. Traffic is up 70% from January, when I didn’t post any new content at all.
So, new content = increased views.
(In other news, water is wet).
tell me something I didn’t know
Engagement!
I positioned this blog series as a conversation prompt, and it worked — pretty much every post drew reader comments, here and on Twitter, and it was a joy to correspond with readers old and new over the comic of the day. It was especially good to see some old names pop up. With such low-stakes subject matter the conversation is about what I was hoping for, too — just well-intentioned fans sharing their own favorite comics series, or reminiscing about what made a day’s entry resonate with them. Good stuff.
nice to see you
Twitter!
Like this blog, my Twitter channel has been neglected as of late, and Comics A-To-Z helped bring it back a bit. My analytics show the usual slow decay of Followers but anecdotally I know I’ve been on that service a lot more in the past month, and I discussed comics to a decent degree over there. There’s a lot of overlap between this blog and my Twitter presence but it isn’t 100%, so it is nice to reach people that might not otherwise comment at Longbox Graveyard.
I will also be memorializing this month’s project with my first “Twitter Moment,” so we will see how that goes.
always happy to hear from readers
WHAT DIDN’T WORK
Daily Blogging!
Setting aside that I may have lost people by blowing up their In-Box, or that this past month’s articles at Longbox Graveyard were even more ephemeral than usual, blogging every day might not have been the brightest idea because it didn’t quite do the job of rebuilding my blogging habit. And that’s largely because this daily blog was anything but daily for me.
The series was front-loaded — pretty much the entire thing was written over a long weekend a month ago, then scheduled for daily publication. This isn’t a bad thing — I’ve run the blog like this for years — but it didn’t do much to exercise my blogging muscles.
Mostly this was down to necessity. February was a month of upheaval for my secret identity. While Comics A-To-Z rolled out each day on Longbox Graveyard, in the background I was flying back and forth between Vancouver and California, quitting my job, packing my apartment into the back of my car, and then driving 1300 miles south from British Columbia and back to my old place in Southern California. Mix in some job interviews and a new job starting next week and you can see it was an eventful month. (And if you were wondering why my comment replies came in big waves, rather than day-by-day, now you know).
Anyway, I come out of the last month resolved to keep blogging at Longbox Graveyard, but whether I set my frequency at “Every Damn Day” or “Whenever The Infrequent Whim Strikes” remains to be seen.
I will get things dialed in eventually (or maybe I won’t)
WHAT’S NEXT?
I dunno. I have some ideas. I’ll be back in March! (But not every day).
Thanks for reading and commenting!
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About Paul O'Connor
Revelations and retro-reviews from a world where it is always 1978, published every now and then at www.longboxgraveyard.com!Posted on February 28, 2018, in Comics A-To-Z and tagged blogging, Social Media. Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.
My life’s had its own upheaval of late, but while I’ve been neglectful in posting comments/twittering, it’s been great seeing all your posts popping up in this series, and the daily emails OF those new posts.
Best of luck wished to you in the new and ongoing endeavors!
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Thanks for reading and posting, Walt, good to know you are still out there!
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Going back to the salt mines of Malibu Comics ?
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I expect I’d happily work for Malibu again, but they are dead as disco, baby.
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I didn’t realize you were moving again. I hope everything goes well!!!
It has been wonderful having new content on Longbox Graveyard ever day this month. Sorry, I didn’t comment more, but I haven’t read a lot of the titles you selected. I was concerned when you entered your “Odin sleep” that even Magog wouldn’t wake you. 🙂 Too many great comic book blogs have shutdown in the last year or two, so I’ll thrilled that my favorite is still around!
You’re not the only blogger who writes in spurts. As you know, I’ve blogged each single day for more years than I can count. For a few years, I was even blogging twice a day. I’ve learned a few tricks while doing this. First, start on holiday themed posts early. They take longer to write and the holiday seasons are usually a hard time to find time to blog. Second, just like you said, when your writing, don’t stop just because you’ve written one post. If you can write three or four posts, go for it. Third, short posts are fine. New content is always better than no content. Lastly, get ahead by at least a week and stay ahead. I routinely have whole weeks where I don’t have time to blog.
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Solid blogging advice from one of my favorite bloggers — thank you.
Plenty of shorter posts coming up. You will be happy to know I’m kicking off a fresh March Madness tomorrow, and then in April I’m rolling out a new weekly feature that should service the blog for more years than I’ve got left!
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Good to have you back, Paul. We have had a couple treehouses since you’ve been back and they are a highlight of the week for me. Perhaps that’s a segment of the blog?
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I wrote about our original Treehouse back in 2016. Reviews from our current round of Treehouse reading will likely be restricted to Twitter rants.
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