At the ASI Politics and the Blog event I had a word with Guido to ask how he saw the secret of his success.

He said that his own blogging phenomenon had started to grow strongly in 2005 when he had linked a Labour poster attacking Michael Howard to classic anti-semitic images from earlier times. (Maybe this?). This vivid contrast had been picked up by the ‘mainstream media’ leading to a surge in traffic which had continued to his heavy numbers now, on a scale most bloggers in the world can not imagine let alone hope to acquire. Thus March 2009:

  • 1,191,456 page views plus another 251,952 via RSS feed.
  • 767,473 unique visits
  • 147,689 absolute visitors

Guido’s point was that most blogging boils down to ‘commenting on comment’. Which is fine, but goes only so far. It is when a blog delivers/creates ‘news’ that it adds that extra value which offers a chance of much higher ratings and overall impact.

Which is why Guido has set up an efficient and powerful virtuous (from his point of view) circle.

Because the site is sharp and well-read, people somewhwere in the system wanting to get out a story or a scandal can send him tip-offs – examples aplenty.

And because the site gets well-informed tip-offs and often hits politicians where it hurts, it gets more readers and more tip-offs. And he gets more advertising plus more influence and impact.

A few years back before I left the FCO I put round an April Fool’s email saying that on retirement I planned to set up a lucrative Freedom of Information Act website. Using my deep knowledge of government I would know how to ask some highly embarrassing questions, the answers to which I would sell to the media. This process would lead to civil servants giving me high-quality tip-offs, which in turn would enable me to ask better and better questions and raise more and more money for the reluctant answers.

Result? Fabulous wealth and influence.

Maybe not such a bad idea. But for many purposes Guido has got there first.

Another top-ranking UK political blogger of a very different sort is Iain Dale. He does well by working hard to create a ‘community’ feel to his site, being courteous and positive and generous with links to all sorts of new bloggers, even where they may have little special to say. This combination of humour and open-minded, inclusive light touch with a libertarian/Right edge is rather how Instapundit has built up such a large following in the USA.

All of which goes some way to explain why the Right is doing better than the Left in overall blogging ratings in the UK.

The British Left in its current form comes from a Napoleonic/Marxist tradition based on using the state to take money from X to give it to Y. This core threat of the use of official force to achieve Left-approved results and inevitable sour Left v Left ideological wranglings sit uneasily with the sort of free-wheeling, do-it-yourself, free-spirit principles which blogging itself represents.

So, bloggers, political or otherwise, be realistic about your prospects. If you can not generate ‘news’ in one or other shape likely to make a bigger impact, be content with creating a fairly small community of people who enjoy your writing and want to stay in touch by swinging past your site.

You are being free and creative. And what’s better than that?