For Upper Peninsula bloggers--and there are more than you might think--it's all about touching base with anyone who stop by for a peek. And the peekers come from all parts of the world.
Some U.P. bloggers write about general lifestyle, some about photography, ornate rubber stamp art, paper crafts, or knitting, Upper Peninsula childhood memories, cottage home ideas, and more. The subjects are endless, as are the locales from which visitors come.
"We get hits from the U.P. of course, but we also have visitors form California, Louisiana, Kansas, and Europe," says Jennifer Tucker, co-owner of Wren Photography in Marquette, who
blogs about her photo shoots, photo subjects, family fun, and more. "It amazes me where our readers come from."
Dr. Debra Charlesworth, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School at Michigan Technological University, an avid paper crafter who shares that passion in her regular blog,
Lift Bridge Cards and Crafts, also gets worldwide attention.
"It's a fascinating map of visitors," Charlesworth says. "They come from the U.K., Canada, India, Russia--all over the world."
The global attention isn't necessarily why bloggers start writing, but, of course, the wide readership is nice. Susan Schuler, a retired teacher from St. Ignace Area Schools who blogs about her beautiful and ornate rubber stamp art in her blog,
Behind the Scenes Straits Stamping Studio, has been blogging for a little less than three years and has had more than 15,000 page views.
"I don't really worry about numbers," says Shuler, whose studio is in her home. "But it's nice to be able to share your craft with that many people."
The aforementioned bloggers are heavy in photography because they all are able to share their various artwork, but they also rely on the written word to tell the stories behind the art, the materials that go into their work, and the various techniques that make the finished product possible. Blogging makes it possible to share their passions with as many people who come to visit.
A U.P. upbringing and how to enhance a cottage home are the passions of Coralie Johnson, who was raised in Iron County, left as a young mother in 1973, and whose family still owns a cottage home on Hagerman Lake. She maintains two blogs,
Wildwood Press and
A Vintage Cottage Home, where she can write about each interest.
"My memories of the U.P. are wonderful and it is great to be able to blog about them," says Johnson, who has also written two books,
The Wishing Years and
A Tree Grows in Trout Creek. "By blogging about my childhood, I've been able to reconnect with so many friends I hadn't talked to in years. The U.P. has always been special to me and always will be."
One of the challenges to blogging is making sure you keep your material fresh, adding new stories and photos every other week or so to keep readers coming.
"You want to make sure and keep readers interested," says Johnson, whose Vintage Cottage Homes blog has 1,100 regular followers. "At first, you just hope people will come, and then once they do, you have to keep them coming."
If the subject is interesting, the material is done well and it is updated frequently, chances are visitors will come. The formula has worked well for Charlesworth.
Page views for her paper crafting blog have surpassed 50,000 since she began blogging in 2008 and they are climbing.
"In January 2011 we had 2,200 hits and in March 2013 we had 3,800, so we're going in the right direction," she says.
There are ways to enhance the possibility of increasing readership. Social media is one method to raise awareness of your blog. Several U.P. bloggers use the social media to promote their blogs.
Wren is one who finds the social media useful to draw readers to her photography blog.
"I promote the blog using Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Google--anyway I can think of," she says. "It all helps. The more visitors I get to the blog the better. It's all about sharing information and the more people that get the information, the more satisfaction there is in blogging."
There are relationships forged through blogging, as readers with common interests offer feedback and make comments on bloggers' regular entries. Once in awhile, the relationships have quite unexpected results.
Charlesworth received a surprise opportunity after a virtual friendship evolved on her paper crafting blog.
"One of my readers and a fellow blogger, Ann Martin, invited me to do a book after we corresponded back and forth," Charlesworth says. "I've never even met her, but we did the book. It's called
All Things Paper, and it's coming out June 11."
As all the bloggers continuously say, it's all about connecting. Sometimes those connections offer surprises, and they almost always offer fun.
"I've only been blogging since January and it's a whole new adventure for me," says Tucker. "I really am having a good time with it."
Jeff Barr is a freelance writer who has lived in Michigan for 46 years. You can reach Jeff at barrj88@gmail.com.