As many of you know, I’m a fairly recent joinee of Facebook (thanks to my friend Maria.) One thing I’ve found about the site is that there’s probably millions of groups one can join.
In my case, I decided to create a group just to see what sort of reaction it gets. About a week ago I created the group Fans of monoblogue. With little word of mouth or promotion, seven people have found it. (Hey, seven is better than just me.) But I wanted to try an experiment and see how many new people I can add on, at least those who have a Facebook profile. (Believe me, Facebook can be a little addicting so be careful about joining if you haven’t already.)
In this group, I update those who join about some of the other places my words are going. While I sometimes crosspost to other sites like Red Maryland, That’s Elbert With An E, and Pro-Maryland Gazette, the majority of my words find their way to the Red County Wicomico site as well. However, I’ve invited a new contributor to join me there; one who’s familiar to readers of my site comments as “Marc.” Marc Kilmer will soon be adding content to the Red County Wicomico page and there’s another gentleman who’s been invited as well to come on board this site I edit.
The idea there is to eventually have at least 4 to 5 talented writers in my blogpen who are familiar with local and state politics and want to write in a setting that has a national distribution but a local focus. (One analogy I’ve been given is Fox Sports Net.) The goal of the Red County site is to have 100 or more subsites by the end of next year and given their growth so far I believe they’ll make it easily.
This blog won’t go anywhere because I like having the freedom to write about other topics which interest me. I think I have a pretty good thing going, so there’s no reason to stop nor is there a reason to set my goals for my site and my words in general too low.
I may as well add one more update. I’m still plugging away at what I’m calling the 2009 Guide to the Maryland Blogosphere. This is a sample of the entry style I’m using; let me know what you think.
monoblogue (Salisbury)
Tagline: News and views from Maryland’s Eastern Shore since 2005.
Posting since: December 2005. Frequency: 1-2 per day.
Contributors: 1
Focuses on: Conservative politics.
Memberships: BlogNetNews Maryland, BlogNetNews Delmarva, Maryland Bloggers Alliance.
monoblogue is an Eastern Shore blog which focuses on conservative politics in both Maryland and nationally. There’s also coverage of political events occurring in and around the Salisbury area. However, monoblogue’s subject matter also detours into local music and, each Thursday during the baseball season, a player is selected as the Delmarva Shorebird of the Week. Michael Swartz is also a contributor to two other Guide blogs, Pro-Maryland Gazette and Red Maryland. In 2008 monoblogue ranked as the #2 most politically influential blog overall by BlogNetNews Maryland, along with #1 in the conservative category and #1 in the per-post category. monoblogue was also ranked by BlogNetNews as the #2 most politically influential blog overall in 2007.
Technorati rating: 37 Google page rank: 3/10
TMI? Not enough? It will be a long post/page because I’m up over 40 confirmed entrants, about 15 written, and there’s another couple dozen that may qualify (so far.) I’m now shooting to have this completed by the first week in January.
As fair warning to close: because of the Christmas holiday, next week will probably be just one post per day. I’m saving bloggy goodness for when people get back home from their travels but don’t want to be idle for more than a day.
