Blogging Challenges All The Time!

Last night I had the great honor and pleasure in participating in the first (annual I hope) Jblogger's convention (click the link to see the WebCast, which I am in, I think). What is a JBlogger you ask? It's a Jewish, or perhaps Israeli, blogger. Nefesh B'Nefesh sponsored this convention - free to bloggers - and shamelessly pressed us to use our soapboxes, large and small, to encourage Aliyah.

The highlight of the evening was definitely putting faces to names. So many of us are anonymous bloggers and it was a lot of fun to meet the people whose blogs and comments I read. The panels were interesting and most of the other speakers were reasonable to really good. Binyamin Netanyahu showed up and spent more than half an hour taking questions and holding forth. We were a captive audience but people were not afraid to ask him tough political questions. Well, maybe people were too polite to ask him the tough questions. :)

One of the main issues discussed was how to up readership. Now this is a very small blog, as far as I can tell. I haven't added any analytics to it; I don't know how many hits it gets a day. I don't post regularly enough to keep people on the edge of their seats, waiting for the next installment.

I see my challenge right now not to increase readership, but to increase writership. If I can start blogging regularly, even once a month but really once a month, I think I would then be ready to try and get more readers.

My goal when I started this blog was not to increase Aliyah. The thought never crossed my mind in connection with my writing. I just wanted a place for my stuff, a brain dump, my own personal soapbox. But I have found that, you, Dear Reader, have given me much much more than that. I will do my best to keep writing, if you will only keep reading! And if I get the extra added value that my writing strengthens and deepens your connection with our land, that's the icing on the cake!