Josh’s Anime Blog

Since today seems to be a day that I’m going off on different tangents about a whole variety of things, I might as well continue. Even though my blog isn’t exactly a traffic monster, I thought I’d write about my theory of blogging (at least on my anime blog) and why I think it is working so far, at least for me. Of course, as most things, this may or may not work for you personally, and it’s principles may be applicable outside of just blogging about anime.

So here are my theories about blogging:

1) Be Current

This has some exceptions - such as when I write a review about an entire series, but for the most part, people are interested in the now, now now. That means writing about things going on, well, now. For me, this takes on several forms. The most obvious is probably my blogging on anime episodes currently airing in Japan. If someone has heard all the fuss about School Days and wants to know about it, well, they can just hop over to my School Days section and read my write-ups for all 12 episodes.

2) Be Different, somehow

Part of the problem with just blogging episodes is that it’s hard to be different. Some anime bloggers have an inherent advantage by actually knowing Japanese (so they only need to wait for the raws) or, better yet, live in Japan or Singapore or elsewhere in the region and can often see the shows directly off of TV. These bloggers are “different” because they can simply get their reviews out faster (which might help people if they want to know RIGHT NOW what happened or don’t watch fansubs, but if people are looking back on a series which has already finished, it doesn’t matter all that much).

Some people are different by having more images and a small writeup. Some are different by having a bigger writeup and fewer images. Some people just decide to be different by posting content other than episode reviews on their site.

This is the route I like to take. Whether it’s my Anime DVD and Manga release posts (which reminds me, I need to post mine for this week…) or my podcast, I try to post some content which isn’t just the same ol’ same ol’.

3) Be Diverse

Some people may see “be different” and “be diverse” and wonder what the difference is. The difference is that being “different” means having different content or presenting content in a different way. “Be diverse” means, once you decide how you’re going to be different, be diverse about it. Now, some blogs are “different” by being the opposite of being diverse and by focusing on a particular genre. This is fine too, just not how I do things.

This mostly comes in with my anime reviews as I try to watch some diverse series, though there are some genres (read: mecha and samurai) which I just haven’t gotten into yet. Since part of the point of this blog is to have anime reviews available, I try to have as many genres represented as I can (of course I have to watch the series myself first.)

4) Post regularly

I try to post something every single day if I can, but I don’t always get a chance. Of course then there are days like today where I make 5 or 6 posts and go crazy. One thing that annoys me somewhat is going through my blogroll and see a blog where it’s been a week since they’ve updated anything.

I think this was one of the bigger problems of why my anime blog was slow to get off the ground. Besides not really being active in the community and not trying to get my blog out there, I was really bad about going days or even weeks at a time without posting something.

I’ve gotten a lot better about that (as my now over 400 blog posts will attest to), but if you want people to come visit your blog every day, then you should have something new for them to look at every day, if possible. Even if it’s something like my web stats post, which is dripping in meta, but which people may at least be interested enough to take a look at anyway.

5) Try to get the user involved

There aren’t a lot of ways to get the user involved in an anime blog, other than interaction in the comments, but there are some peripheral things people can do. Having polls is one way, and many anime blogs do have polls on their site. I don’t largely because I don’t really have a good place to put one without pushing the links in my sidebar farther down than I’d like. Part of the way that I try to get people involved if they want is by allowing them to choose a theme for the website.

Normally, the website randomly loads a theme, with a different header image and stylesheet colors. But I also let people whether they want a particular theme. If they really, really like Shakugan no Shana then, well, they can have Shana pop up on every page they look at then if they want.

6) Give your Users Something to look forward to

The final point, and this kind of goes with point (4). Yes, it’s good to post regularly to get people to check your blog regularly, but it’s also good to give them something to look forward to. Whether that’s looking to see what you think of Episode 4 of Anime Y or something else, it’s always good to give your visitors something to look forward to seeing when they visit.

Of course, I’m not sure how well these things are helping as of yet. The anime blog community is so saturated, and while I actually started blogging before many of the very popular blogs sprung up, I didn’t actually try to go out and advertise my page until the other blogs were already established, so I’m kind of trying of squeeze my way in. But I’ve been happy with the slow, though steady growth of the blog over the past few months, and so I hope the things that I do are of enough interest to people that they’ll keep coming, and that new people will come as well.