English has become the lingua franca of the Internet and most technologists (developers, designers, tech bloggers) are expected to speak, and if possible publish, in English. Writing in English obviously brings them a big audience yet it shuns those who can’t speak English away!
Paweł from appleblog.pl rarely get less than 5 comments on any of his posts… one on their homepage at the moment has had 68! He’s blogging on a popular topic, Apple, but in an unpopular language. Based on the audience participation, I’d say the people have a thirst for the comments no doubt much more than they have a first for mine.
Many people think blogging in English gives you a bigger userbase. Whilst this may be true in some circumstances, writing in any language besides English or Chinese about a popular topic (say general technology) will give you a niche. It might still be advisable not to write about cybernetics in Cornish!
Perhaps Esperanto came 100 years too early. In the World where global communication is now so easy, with China or Chile only a few seconds away, wouldn’t a global language be more useful now. Whilst English is the global language at the moment (of sorts) it will soon be replaced by the new global power, whoever that will be!
It’s interesting how even in a land without actual borders that linguistic ones still apply.
Many, manny times I thought about writing in English, but to write about Apple in English I would have to compete some great bloggers out there. An there’s off course language barrier – you (me) have to be good in English to do so.
About comments (funny that right after your post I got whole buch of new posts and all of them have like 4-5 comments now. But give it a time, it’s Sunday):
- I analized site stats and came out with 3 special hours best for publishing. It’s 6am, 11am and 3pm. First one makes your post visible in RSS reader when people sit behind their desks. It also create positive feeling, that reader can start day with your blog.
Posting about 11am and 3pm will place your post first (more or less) in que after lunch. That doesn’t apply to news category. And also – it’s imposible to post on certain hours when you have readers around the globe (vide blogging in English).
- You have to build community about blog – there’s nothing better then plesent atmosphere on blog: mix news with comments, with analitics, with some funn stuff. Invite readers to write (you have to have strong brand for them to like to do that).
- Ask questions in post and encourage
How far are you in MacHeis Joe? Take care!
It’s not easy, I’ve tried it many times.
I guess English blogs will always be visited by more diverse people, where as for instance Polish bloggers will get mostly Polish visitors, and hence they can focus on issues specific to their country, sense of humor, or culture.
Same for Afrikaans – my home language. I’ve discovered that since I started blogging, till now, they Afrikaans blogging community has grown tremendously, and they blog about things that are truely South African, but more specific, they blog about things only Afrikaans people will ‘get’. The whole culture is different from any other nation, and people like sharing that – even on blogs. I know a lot of expats visit these blogs in an attempt to stay connected with their home grounds.
Given the global (boarderless) nature of the internet it seems fairly true that other languages will remain a fairly niche thing. Is it so odd that we still have linguistic boarders given the vast and long tradition of language. To have a standardised language for the net but then a different language for the ‘real’ world seems like a step in the wrong direction.