I am a huge baseball fan so I have been watching the Major League Baseball playoffs. The Chicago White Sox have played well and put on a pitching clinic. While the Houston Astros beat up on the St. Louis Cardinals (with slight contention by Albert Pujols), one of the teams with the best records in baseball, to reach the World Series for the first time in the history of the game. Congrats to the both teams, they both are well deserving of a trip to the World Series.
The baseball season is like no other sport since it is so long. It starts in February when pitchers and catchers head to the warm weather and ends in nearly November. A lot can happen in that long amount of time. For example, the Astros were only had a 15 win and 30 lose record in by the end of May yet were able to turn it around. While the White Sox saw a sizable lead in the American League turn into an intense pennant race as they edged out a surging Cleveland Indians team.
Like baseball, the key to blogging is being consistent through a long season, everyday. To maintain a successful blog you need to feed it with content at a consistent pace to maintain consistent readership. If I went out and wrote 10 posts a month but all on the same day, you might get a few readers initially, but your numbers would most likely decline thereafter as the content became stale. In blogging, like baseball, you some days need a "duck snort post" to maintain your blog and other days you are filled with ideas, like a day on the diamond where the baseball looks like watermelon on a tee.
Ironically, the blogosphere had a few different baseball analogies lately like the one I just read on Micro Persuasion where Steve Rubel made this baseball analogy in regard to blogging:
"Baseball is a good metaphor here. A blog link/mention combo is like a home run - a four bagger. You get attention, Google Juice, traffic and branding. Blog links without mentions and plain old mentions are like doubles because in either case you get two out of these four bases."
Blogspotting mentioned this Steve Rubel post and highlighted a post by Bruce Stuart who contested the analogy. Bruce disagrees because he does not think baseball has the appropriate reach for a comparison with the global reach of blogging. I see what he is trying to say but I do not think Bruce understands the reach of the game of baseball and undoubtedly has never heard of the Baseball World Cup. Nonetheless, I do not think Steve's analogy is that far off since he is not referring to blogging and it's reach but rather explaining how a blog link or mention is an exciting aspect of blogging, like a home-run is an exciting aspect of a baseball game. A home-run contributes a run to the game in baseball the team with the most runs wins. While links and mentions in blogging contribute to a blogs popularity and a blog with the most links and mentions could be construed as the most popular blog, thus winning the blogging game.
For other recent baseball and blogging references in the blogosphere check out the posts on Resonance Partnership Blog and Business Blog Consulting.
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I like the baseball analogy. You have to just keep going to the plate all season. Some of your posts will strike out, some will be a single, double or triple....and every now and then you will hit it out of the park. As long as you are batting 300 you are doing great and much better than most others.
Posted by: Thom Singer | Saturday, November 19, 2005 at 05:31 PM
Frank, I have a father, brother and nephew named Frank. And one day, our little nephew was missing, and my father and brother asked me if I knew where little frankie was. And I couldn't resist: "To be Frank Frank and Frank, I don't know where Frank is".
Yep, not funny.
:/ It's a bloggy blog world.
Posted by: mark | Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 03:07 AM