Paul Malpas

Today I am struck dumb, my mind is not working because my wife has just done something that I am very proud of but for legal reasons I cannot tell you about it, so you will all have to celebrate with me in this anonymous brilliance and I will try and experiment to see if we can get some empathy here.

One of the beautiful things about blog writing is the facility that WordPress give you to analyse where your readers are, how long they spend reading you and when.  This is  magnificent if you are blogging for business reasons, it helps you to know your customer, but when your purpose is not commercial it becomes useless, but interesting.  So today I am going to try and winkle out some of my readers from exotic corners of this planet and try to get them to tell me what turns them on.

I know who is reading the misguided waffle that pours from these keys on a good day.  I know where you are from, how long I keep you interested and how many pages you read before you get bored to tears. Therefore I am today going to analyse the less trafficked areas of the world.  I will list the locations of these readers, no names because I do not have them, but I know what you read and how many minutes of most days you waste, reading this guff that I spew onto the page.

Introduce yourself in the comments facility so I know who you are.  It might help me write something more pertaining to your situation.

Who for example is the person in San Francisco who spent ages reading me on 7th April or for that matter the person in Sacramento.  I think I might know the person in Tallahassee in Florida, who is a regular visitor and has little to do if she reads me regularly, but at least she has introduced herself and congratulated me.  I also think that I might know the person in Oxford, Mississippi who is a frequent reader and as also written nice things in the past.

I can only guess at the person in Rochester, Minnesota, who had a spate in late March but who has run aground since and I can understand why the person in Manchester, New Hampshire spent ages reading me this Monday gone, obviously wishing they were in Manchester in England enjoying the lovely Spring sunshine as opposed to the horrible rainy weather that early April always brings to New England.

The person in Etobicoke, Canada intrigues me, who spent ages reading me on 6th April.  Where is it?  We also have a regular reader in Bolton, Ontario, near Toronto.  I can have an educated guess at the person in San Miguel de Allende, in Central Mexico.  Good morning Eileen, by the way if your name is not Eileen and your a bloke, my apologies but the name definitely suits you.

Whose fancy have I tickled in I’viv, in the Ukraine, who spent three hours reading last week.  I know the people in Falkenberg in Swedan, because they rang me and said how much they have enjoyed the blog and that they had read the lot.  I have news for them, they have only read seven pages, there are 96 of these posts altogether, so keep reading.  The recent visitor from Melbourne worries me, he should be in the nets training hard for the forthcoming tour not sitting on his backside.  You do not realize how good we are.

There is too much traffic in England and Ireland to isolate individuals but the popularity of the blog lies in London, Manchester, Stockport, Huyton, Sale, Atherton, Henfield, wherever that is, Huddersfield, Basingstoke, Boothstown, Wembley, Reading and Sheffield.  As you would expect Dublin and Limerick feature highly in Ireland.

So please get in touch on the comments facility and tell me what you think, what makes you tick and why I should stop making a fool of myself.  Otherwise it is like talking to a brick wall and I was doing that all my life in Manchester.

Get in touch.

It was about three months ago when I decided to go one step higher on the writing ladder.  For years I had always fancied myself as a writer, but one of poor quality.  I wanted to improve this quality and the only way I knew besides reading quality 24/7 was writing in a disciplined manner on a regular and determined basis. Putting together pieces of writing on various subjects but doing them  almost as a  daily routine and then re-reading and editing to try to ensure an increase in quality.  I was thinking for some time of a diary but that did not really get me to where I wanted to be.  Then I started to read of this comparatively new idea of blogging, which seemed to fulfill all the necessary parameters I had set myself but which I had no idea on how to float.

I heard about this seminar that Mark Attwood, my son-in-law and an internet marketing expert, was holding in Cheshire in mid November 2009.  It was called The Art Of Blogging For Business. As I did not have a clue what blogging entailed I thought that this might be a good start and went along hoping to learn something.  What I got was something else, far above my expectations.  Mark spoke for six hours only broken up by an hour from another really interesting guy and whereas a lot of it was above my head in terms of computer know-how, I grasped enough to make myself decide that this genre was for me.  I listened afterwards to the delegates talking amongst themselves and realized how much these professionals had got out of the day and I decided to take another step forward.  I approached Mark, informed him of my predicament, told him I was computer illiterate almost and surely I would need to go on a course.

“”Nonsense” was the brave words he used, “just do it” he said and he called over one of his associates, Steve Wild, explained my case and within two days I was set up with a blog vehicle on which all I had to do was press a few buttons in a predetermined sequence and hey presto!  A blog.

Initially I was rather scared as I stared at the screen wondering what to write about and 19 words dribbled out of my brain and down my arm onto the blog.  I read, re-read and edited this mighty piece, pressed a button and there it was on the printed page.  How proud was I?  The following day 545 words splattered themselves onto the page and from there it just flowed.  What was a trickle very quickly became a torrent and I saw an increase in quality but I suppose a lot of that could be down to conceit.

However as I wrote I could hear Mark’s words ringing in my ears “do not underestimate the power of the blog, it is a serious tool” but little did I realize that only two weeks into my venture and quickly getting into my stride, I wrote a piece, an innocent piece I thought, and I was inundated with e-mails and comments on my blog page.  A lot of people thought I was libellous, the editor of the local paper, who had the grace to ring me and let me know said she would sue me the next time it happened.  People I had known for years stopped talking to me all because I had written the truth.

This onslaught knocked me back considerably, I had never known anything so immediate and so powerful.  My style suffered as a result and the following days blog output was anodyne to say the least.  However buoyed up by encouragement from various quarters I continued my merry way but in a more watchful and circumspect manner and slowly cranked myself up to my present “tell it as it is” state.  I can honestly say I have never come across a more potent tool of communication than a blog.  I was not prepared for the onslaught although Mark had told me of the weirdos out there.  He had been attacked for months by certain individuals whose only motive was jealousy and whose only aim was disruption and now, don’t I know it, but let us soldier on and f… the begrudgers!

If any reader wants to follow my trail of self immolation, just refer back to my previous blogs on the subject, namely  Blogging On written on 9 December 2009, Keep Writing of the 18 December 2009 and The Importance Of Blogs of the 12 January 2010.  Happy writing, make it good, but do not be vindictive for the sake of it.