Per Darren Rouse's Problogger Post Today:

Has Blogging Lost Its Relational Focus?

This morning I read and commented at Problogger about the question above. I thought I would post it here, and invite you to continue the conversation.

Dee's Response...

Yes. Blogging has lost it''s relational focus.

I have a book niche blog and belong to a blog team of published authors, editors and agents, and we rarely visit each other's blogs. I was guilty of it myself. But this summer I decided to change my mindset about who my blog belongs to. I am the owner but the blog belongs to my subscribers and the writing community.

So I use Darren's Speedlinking idea every other Friday to link other blogs who are having conversations about Christian Fiction or Christian Books. I still ask other bloggers to come on and guest blog. I belong to a book tour blog alliance of 150 bloggers, who blog about the same book on the same day. I comment on many of those blog sites during the blog tour. I have encouraged them to follow me on Twitter. now we are on twitter doing book chats and crazy things. Someone introduced me to ning, so i started a social network (The Christian Fiction Network) based on the blog. I have 40 published authors in this network we feed off each other post are favorite blogposts in the network. Last week I began using utterz to host author chats on their and link them to my blog and then share it with my blog buddies for cross promotion. Christian Fictgion is also on blogtalkradio. I don't have a show, but i hack other radio shows ;)) A great way to read podcast bloggers and find connect with them.

Since I've been playing around with other forms of social media that i can feed into my blog it has kept things interesting and i share these applications with the writing blogging community.

I agree. It's easy to go into your own bubble and create compelling blog posts to find noone is reading. Then you goto your blogfriends blogs to see no one is reading there either, because everyone has a blog now. But rolling back and remembering why blogging was fun back in the day gives you the juice to get creative and back in the game.

My stats have jumped up and so have pr and book opportunities for me as well. I've even been approached by three lit agents and a publisher. Thanks Daren for keeping rich content and opening up problogger for others to share and communicate.

"Hey you...talk to me!!!!!"Photo courtesy of Crafting with Love

Dee Stewart is a writing diva mother, News Editor for Hope for Women Magazine, inspirational book reviewer for Romantic Times Magazine, and owner of Christian Fiction Blog and The Christian Fiction Network. Her writings have appeared in: Spirit Led Woman, Gospel Today, Good Girl Book Club, The Dabbling Mum, Atlanta Christian Family, Mosaic Literary, Precious Times, Vertical Fix just a few. Visit her at Christian Fiction. Follow her on Twitter at DeeGospel