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NBI: The Story behind the post #2

Lotro launched in April 2007 and I played from the very beginning. The launch of  new game is a great time to be a blogger. There are lots of new things to write about and an eager audience who want to  extend their gaming experience by reading. Invariably an impromptu blogging ring forms and you can get a good amount of traffic by linking to and being linked from others who are writing about the game.

In my fairly limited experience  I found that "How to" posts that are clearly labelled as such can act as traffic magnets during the early stages of a game.  However the most fun I had blogging about Lotro came from a series of posts written in character about my Dwarven Champion Throg. These posts never got me a lot of traffic but they were great fun to write and still give me great pleasure now when I read back over them. As post of the day I'll pick this one: A Sojourn in the Shire. I think I got the tone of the post just right as my proudly feisty dwarf considers the peaceful demeanour of the hobbits with benign arrogance.

Hint for new bloggers - post titles are hugely important because they are what attract readers. An established blogger can get away with literary references and clever puns in titles but I strongly advise a new writer to keep it simple. Always mention the name of the game and then state what the post is about.  "Diablo 3 Ranged Weapons are Overpowered" is a good example that should attract some readers and of course anything like "How to make gold in GW2" is a traffic magnet but any talk about earning gold may attract the wrong kind of traffic.

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