Scrapatorium- Observation

I decided to follow one of my hypotheses and limited my search to a picture album blog. I came upon Scrapatorium: Collage. This person who made this blog looks like she made a scrapbook and found random pictures and pasted them conveniently on top of each other to make one picture. They titled the pictures but didn’t put any personal comments underneath the photo, and they didn’t enable comments from visitors either. I believe the audience that they have are people interested in the arts, photography or collages. Most of these photos look pretty old maybe set in the 60’s, I can’t tell if they are from various magazines or photos that she randomly picked out.

They also have other blogs that they have been works on also. Snapatorium: Found Photograph and Swapatorium: A Journey through Junkland. Both of these blogs had more content than her Scrapatorium but I wanted to know why. I decided to e-mail them with my questions and see their response.

Scrapatorium- Final

Why did you decide to make a blog?

I actually have three blogs. It started with SNAPATORIUM - found photographs. I collect and also deal in vernacular photographs. I have a group I started on eBay, but wanted a better way to communicate with my customers and a place to share my collection. I had so much fun with that one that I created two others, SWAPATORIUM - A Journey Through Junkland which is about junk shopping & collecting and SCRAPATORIUM which is for my collage work. A blog allows me to share information regarding subjects that I enjoy, but at the same time, remain somewhat anonymous which I like because I am essentially a very private person.

Who do you want to reach out too, who do you want your audience to be? (aka,
male, female, 50 yr olds?)

I have no target audience in mind. I welcome everyone. At the same time, even if I am the only one reading it, then that is ok with me. I have no intention of purposely building an audience. If it happens, it happens. My audience for Scrapatorium grew tremendously because my blog was picked by Blogger as a "Blog of Note." Since I have links to my other blogs, those also get tons of hits now.

Do you know what type of audience you have now?

I would say based on the emails I receive and the reports from my counter, I get people of all ages, both male and female, predominately from the US and England, although I do get hits from all over the world.


What kind of message do you hope to send out to your audience?

Honestly, I don't have a message. I just like having fun with my blogs.

Scrapatorium- Extra

After I wrote her the first e-mail with the 5 questions, I decided to ask what she thought about pictures playing in the roll of gaining more audience.

You have blogs that contain a lot of pictures, do you think that pictures on blogs have a great affect on your audience?

No, I don't think photos would generate a larger audience. If you have a good written blog, people will read it. If you have interesting photos to look at, people will look at them. However, if you have crappy writing and or photos, you won't get readership. So in the end, it all comes down to having something interesting to say or show. Too much competition with blogs to just have a mediocre site these days.

Spirit Infusion- Observation

I have found another great blog that is different from the rest of the other blogs that I have looked at. It is called Spirit Infusion: Where Spirit and Soul Connect and from what I can tell the main audience of this blog is the Garrett family. It is a gathering place for their stories, images and musings. This is an interesting way to stay connected to your family, using a blog. It would save on phone and postage bills, the internet is really taking over our communication, it is easier and less expensive.

It looks like there is one author, who writes about her daily activities from work or spending time in Minnesota. There are a lot of pictures of a baby, what every family member wants to see. It is a great blog for their family to read. The author writes updates of what is going on her life but has time to include pictures. They really don’t have a lot of comments on their posts which surprised me since the majority of the viewers are her family.

Spirit Infusion- Final

Why did you decide to make a blog?

Good question. I actually have several answers:
1. I find it fun
2. It's a great way to share my thoughts, things happening in our lives, and photos without sending mass emails out to people (that is so annoying).
3. My family loves it and if I don't put something up for a few days I start receiving complaint phone calls and emails.
4. I can write about my day once and then anyone can read it and I don't have to email a bunch of people. I can just tell them to look at the website if they want to know what's going on. (Or I'll reference it in a short email to them.)
5. I like to think a lot, read a lot, and I'm just a natural teacher so it allows me to think out loud sometimes and see if I hear feedback from other people. (I haven't done so much of that since school started in August and I'm teaching full time again. I chair a department so I have a lot going on.)


Who do you want to reach out too, who do you want your audience to be? (aka,
male, female, 50 yr olds?)

I don't know that I'm intending to reach out to anyone. I do know that my family reads it - both my family and my husband's family. I also know that several of my students like to log on and see what's going on. I haven't publicized it to all my classes, it's more like I tell a student here or there that I have a personal relationship with and feel like sharing with them.
My husband and I are involved in church and ministry and so we also hope that people we spend time with in church will read our website and interact with us about topics that are of interest. I love to discuss things about church and God - particularly about looking at ways to "do" church that aren't like church. (If that makes any sense.) If you look back at my blog and see some of the links to sites like Doug Pagitt's blog, Jordon Cooper, The Ooze, etc that might explain a little of what I am trying to say. I am growing weary of being in a spiritual place where we all look at the back of each other's heads. I'd rather be in relationship and dialogue in a place where people are real, vulnerable, honest, and authentic.

Do you know what type of audience you have now?

It's mostly my family, friends, and a group of students and graduates from the University I go to. Other than that, I'm not sure.

What kind of message do you hope to send out to your audience?

I think that's addressed above in my answer to who do I want to reach out to