Tuesday, December 11, 2012

A blogging dads group. So crazy it just might work.

All For One

I've never seen myself as the guy who started things, but at some point, a person has to stop telling himself, "Someone should REALLY do something like that," and just do it himself.

The goal of the Dad Bloggers Facebook group is mainly to connect with other blogging dads and to help each other get more readers and bigger blogs. You don't have to be a cynical in-it-to-win-it blogger to want more readers. You write in a public space in the hope that others read it, after all.

The second goal, which relates to the first, is to create partnerships on giveaways. Many of us get emails from PR companies, hoping we'd review a product, and many of them also give us the opportunity to offer a giveaway of the product. Instead of one blogger reviewing the product and ending the review post with a giveaway, a group of bloggers from the group would be able to link to the original review post and to the company that sponsors the giveaway, and include the giveaway on their blogs. That way, the sponsors get visibility on multiple dads' blogs, while only giving away a single item. The bloggers benefit from that too, because readers can get more sweepstakes entries if they Like bloggers' Facebook pages, or subscribe to their feeds, for example.

While not all bloggers may be interested in including giveaways on their blogs, I believe the group can benefit all blogging dads. We can share each other's posts, leave comments, Thumb Up on Stumble Upon and Reddit, Like posts, share Facebook updates, retweet, and a lot more.

"Top 100 Blogging Dads" lists come and go on various websites. It's nice to be included in some of these and it's disappointing to be ignored by others. But really, the only thing these lists do is manufacture cliques for no reason. This group, then, is welcome to any blogging dad. That's all. You have a blog, you have a kid, you're male, you're good. I don't care where you are blogging from, how many readers, Facebook fans, and Twitter followers you have. The more members, the better it is for everyone.

That's it. One final note: I know some people hate Facebook. But Facebook Groups seems to be the best place for something like that.

Email me if you have any questions about the group, whether you're a blogger or a representative for a company.

Or simply go to the group's page and click the JOIN GROUP button. 



15 comments:

  1. Hey Oren,

    Great idea. I clicked join group today. Look forward to working with you to promote dad bloggers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, James! Sorry it took me a while to get you in there. Facebook was acting weird. 5 minutes after I write a post saying Facebook is the best way to go, Facebook stopped working for me...

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  2. Hi Oren,

    You've answered yesterday's question with: "You have a blog, you have a kid, you're male, you're good."

    Facebook is usually an afterthought for me, but I spent more time on this group's page yesterday than I had in the last month on Facebook. I think that there may be something to this group for long-term involvement.

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  3. Thanks for doing this, Oren. I clicked join group. What can I do to help?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just hope people participate, and if they see people helping them, they will find the time to help others in the group. Thanks!

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  4. I like the sentiment, "It's so crazy it just might work!" Truthfully, most of the world and the larger media establishment have already branded dads as bumbling idiots. I might be an idiot in their eyes but in my three-year-old sons eyes I am a superhero (cape and all when I am not having it dried cleaned)! As far as I am concerned maybe a little crazy can be a good thing!

    Aaron

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Another thing is about egos. I've had this fear that women could cooperate, but men were too obsessed with "winning" to help each other. The way the group has grown in the past week, though, makes me feel much better about this.

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  5. I have a Facebook account and enough friends that I should know what I am doing there, but I spend so little time there that I am not sure how much I will be participating. But this is a great idea and I love the notion of all in. Better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! Maybe you can visit when you have a new post. Right now it's still a little disorganized, but I want to make a weekly post-share, so once a week we'll put posts up, and others will share on Twitter or Facebook, or just read and comment (as long as they like the posts--I'd hate for it to become another place where people share without reading).

      When that happens, I think it will be a good place not only for you to share posts, but also to find posts and blogs. So hopefully there will be stuff there for you too.

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  6. Love the idea and hope to see some good things come out of this post!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I hope you can all help me spread the word too. It's great that we already have nearly 60 members, but we can probably get even more. Most blogging dads are so isolated, they probably don't even realize there are so many of us out there.

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  7. Great idea, proud to a part of this. LMK if I can help spread the word.

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    Replies
    1. Hey Kyle, thanks! It can't hurt if you could mention the group on blog/Facebook/Twitter. The more members, the better the group will be.

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  8. Very nice post thanks >>

    ReplyDelete

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