Interview with Indie
His Blog: The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy
URL: indeterminacy.blogspot.com
His audience: persons from all walks of life who like to read quality fiction–bloggers, high school and college students, people in the creative arts, and people who work with language in their jobs–his blogroll reflects his audience
Thing to note when you visit: the interactivity; the connection between Indie and his readers; the quality of the content; the special features and unique ideas
1.3 Audience Synchronicity
Indie has two English-language blogs and a Polish-language blog. Click the screen shot to see his satellite blog–Indeterminacies of Synchronicity. It’s this second blog that provides the venue for the feature that engages his audience in writing their own flash fiction stories each week. Each story posted there is rewarded with a link. The Polish-language blog offers translations of selected stories for a smaller segment of his audience.
Indie’s respect for his readers shows whenever he talks to or about them.
Indie, who is your audience?
I’ve been greatly surprised by the type of people reading my blog. In a nutshell I think of them as the blogging elite. I’ve received feedback from artists, musicians, authors, editors, stand-up comics, company CEO’s, psychotherapists, lawyers, professors and other high level professionals, many of them authors of intelligent blogs themselves. This is, for me, another sign of success. Not too long ago I noticed I had some referrals from an online university class in which the professor asked the students to analyze a flash fiction story of their choosing. He had included my URL as an example of flash fiction, a genre which I incidentally knew nothing about until long into the existence of my blog.
All this attention has been especially gratifying, but also intimidating. I hope I am able to keep up whatever it is that caught their interest.
How do your readers find out about you?
People have found me by accident, through links, random referrals, by word of mouth, using search engines and probably other ways I can’t imagine. I followed all the instructions for promoting one’s blog. I entered myself in all the directories and search engines, I use several traffic exchange programs, I comment at other blogs I find interesting (though these days I have hardly any time left for reading other blogs), I have a description and keywords list included in my blog template, which probably helps improve my search rank for various terms. Lately I’ve been presenting my blog at Blog Explosion’s blog battles. Also, many visitors seem to show up through image searches, which probably goes with the territory of having so many photo posts.
What do they like best about your site?
According to the feedback I receive, people like the idea of what I’m doing (pairing found photos with stories), even if they do not enjoy my writing. Others seem enthusiastic about the pace at which I post stories (five a week at the moment), as well as enjoying the stories. Others enjoy the interactivity or the fact that I try to answer all my comments. On weekends I post a photo without a story and invite my visitors to contribute their own story. I then post my take on the photo the Monday after. Those stories have all been collected at the companion blog indeterminacies.blogspot.com, including links to their respective authors. A few bloggers have been kind enough to write reviews about my project. I’ve linked to them on my front page, and would refer you to these for a feeling about what other people see in my blog.
Indie’s audience is made up of blogger readers from all walks of life. They could be the same people who read our blogs. It’s hard to miss Indie’s connection with his readers. I suspect that even with the great photos, stories, interactivity, and sense of community that the biggest attraction for readers is Indie.
What brings readers to your blog?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
