5 Ways a Blog is Like a Message in a Bottle

How is a blog like a message in a bottle?

1. Message in bottle bobs around in the ocean

The vision most of us have of a message in a bottle is one of the bottle bobbing around in a huge ocean that covers masses of the earth's surface.  It is a vision of the bottle being by itself in the middle of nowhere.

How is this like a blog? A blog is out on the worldwide web amidst millions of other blogs and yet is all alone in trying to connect up with others.  It is bobbing around on the internet if it has no direction given to it.

2. Message in bottle lands on a beach

A bottle is picked up by a current in the ocean and eventually may land on a beach somewhere.

A blog may also find its way into a current of information on the internet.  Perhaps the blog has some good keywords in it. It may land in front of a reader's eyes, but are they the eyes the blog was intended to reach?

3. Message in bottle is noticed by a person on the beach

Once the bottle is on the beach, someone may notice there is a bottle on the beach.

Someone surfing the worldwide web may notice the blog there.

4. Message in bottle is picked up by the person who found it

A person needs to want to open the bottle on the beach.  Does the message paper show through the glass bottle? If the bottle is clear, or an interesting shape, or perhaps it looks really old, the person may be curious to see what is inside.  If it is an old beer bottle, most likely the person will not even see that there is a message inside it.  The person may not even pick it up.

Again, the same is true of a blog. Is the title intriguing enough to grasp the full interest of the person who has found it on the worldwide web? Does it hold promise for the reader?  Does it look like it will answer a question for the reader or solve a problem for the reader?

5. Message in bottle is read by the finder and shared with friends

The person who picks up the bottle, retrieves the message.  It may intrigue him, and if so, he will most likely share his find with others, and may keep the bottle and the message as a treasured keepsake.

If someone clicks on the blog with the intriguing title, he will read it.  He may find it contains valuable information that he wants to share with his friends.  He may post it on Facebook or some other social media. It becomes a treasure to him to bookmark.  It may cause him to subscribe to the blog so he can receive more valuable messages.

If you write a blog, what are you doing to make sure it gets in the right current to be noticed and read by the right people?  How do you grab their attention and provide excellent content so that your reader will find your messages to be a treasure just like the message in a bottle?