Thought: Forgetting the bloggers who helped you
Whenever any of the sites listed on my links page stops working, I start wondering about those site owners. Where did they go? What are they doing now? Why did they let their domain name expire? Are they ok? These are some of the questions I think about regularly. Ever since my first days of blogging, or running a website, I have had a lot of luck finding people who have helped me, and finding a lot of people who have taken advantage of my help.
I wonder how many of us actually think, after our blogs start becoming popular, about the bloggers who have helped us improve in the past.
You may forget bloggers who helped you in different ways
I have realized that many times, when bloggers get what they want, like an increasing number of comments or blog popularity, they forget or deliberately ignore the bloggers who helped them reach that stage. If you are such a blogger, once you become famous or achieve some blogging goals, you may start ignoring the small time bloggers who may have given you advice before, while focusing no more prominent bloggers.
You may also simply start linking less to the bloggers who helped you in the past, even if they write great quality content. You may also tend to e-mail or IM them less, while interacting with new, famous bloggers more. One of the reasons you may forget some people who helped you in the past is that those bloggers may not have helped you before in ways you wanted to be helped, but now that you have achieve some blog popularity, they may be offering a lot of help to you.
Have you forgotten the bloggers who helped you? Have you been forgotten by other bloggers?
What is your opinion on this? Do you still keep in touch with the bloggers who helped you improve, directly or indirectly? Do you know of bloggers who asked for your help before, but now that they consider themselves to be more popular, they stopped contacting you?
Thank you for reading.
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( June 5th, 2007 at 10:35 pm )
I try and keep in touch with everybody I come in contact with. Well, everybody who regularly comes to my site, and comments, that is. But when their site goes down, sometimes, I do lose touch with them, but a lot of times, they’d come back with another domain, and they’d end up finding me instead. LOL.
Nope, I never forget those bloggers who’ve helped me in the past. I even still have many of them linked on my site, since they’re still on the ‘net scene.
As for knowing any bloggers who’ve asked for my help before, but now have stopped contacting me… I can name a few, actually… But I won’t, and I still am nice to them, and sometimes even comment on their sites, even though they don’t return the favor.
( June 5th, 2007 at 11:12 pm )
SP, thanks for the comment. One way a blogger can keep in touch with others is indeed to see who visits the site. If a person knows a 1000 people, and about 100 of those people call that person regularly, it will probably be easy on many levels and in many situations to keep in touch with those 100 people more, and much easier, than the other 900.
I also have all the bloggers, I think, bookmarked or linked in one way or another, though many of the urls have simply stopped working. I sometimes e-mail those bloggers to say hi and to keep in touch; sometimes the e-mail bounces back, sometimes some bloggers respond and sometimes I never get any response.
Maybe I should start a post asking you to name those people? :p
Thanks again SP!
( June 6th, 2007 at 1:10 am )
Hmmm.. I think I may be guilty of this.
Since I’ve bounced around with blogs so much, I lost contact with a lot of the first people who helped me. Such as my first host ever (although she barely updated her site and barely answered emails so… didn’t seem such a big loss), or all my affiliates back then (over two years ago!). Then with my second hosted blog, I bounced around different domains with my host, until she quit and since then I haven’t heard from her and don’t know if she’s still on the net scene. I’m really grateful to my second host cause she was great, I do miss her… but I don’t know what’s up with her now. I really should email.
As for now, I owe a lot to SP. In light of what this blog just discussed, I shall remember that and be sure to keep in contact with her, even if I end up moving away from her domain.
( June 6th, 2007 at 2:42 pm )
Jess, the two scenarios you described [2 hosts disappearing and no way for you to contact them easily] seem to imply that you didn’t forget them, but that they probably moved on. As for the host that did not answer e-mails much, some people probably keep in touch with the bare minimum number of e-mails possible, whereas others simply do not want to keep in touch. It can be an interesting experience, yes, to contact someone after a while, whether or not that someone was a close friend or a distant contact before.
So, this post fostered your connection with SP more? That is awesome, no?
( June 6th, 2007 at 5:53 pm )
If we have something in common, we might keep touch.
It is, however, very frustrating to spend a lot of time helping another blogger on a help forum or something with design or code or whatever only to not even get a thank you. Agh.
( June 6th, 2007 at 9:12 pm )
Valerie, thanks for the comment. That is an interesting way to look and decide on it; sharing “common” elements with a person. What if the other person had more differences than commonalities, would you still keep in touch probably if the other person was considerate and nice?
True, many times a person may simply take an advice and implement it, without giving any credit of any sort. However, if such a trend is repeated by someone, then it may probably be that either the person who is asking for or getting help does not realize that the helper may be wanting something back, or that the person asking for or getting help is maybe taking ideas on purpose without wanting to give credit deliberately.
( June 7th, 2007 at 2:27 pm )
No, I don’t forget anyone who helped me or the people I met in the beginning. My main problem is keeping in touch with people and I think it’s rather common. When we first start out, we find a few sites we like and latch on to them for a while. Then, we notice someone making an interesting comment and follow their link. From there, it snowballs with visits all over the place until our read feeders look like a metropolitan telephone book. It’s a good thing, though. It’s a form of growth; it’s a way to open doors for ourselves, as well as for other people.
It looks like I just went off on a tangent, but at least I answered your question first
( June 7th, 2007 at 4:28 pm )
Carolyn, thanks for sharing. Keeping in touch with people can be hard, specially if you know a lot of people. For me, it can become hard to keep in touch because of organization: I switch around contact priorities to test new things for myself, and along the way, sometimes there may be a huge delay before I send a “Hey, how is it going?” or “Hello” message to someone. For example, Sidney (Bubs) has sent me gifts on more than one occasion, and I am late and running behind on sending her some great gifts that I have in mind. I am hoping to get to those important priorities soon, though time keeps on moving and I have to catch up in that perspective.
If only we had an easier way to track all our comments, even on sites that do not use cocomments or co.mments, it would be very nice. Maybe more blogs should have subscription e-mail capabilities.
You’re on track, thanks for explaining.