Group psychology and the blog phenomenon

In a group of people, each people influence the thought of others. If you are not aware of how group psychology controls the way we behave; you can read this nice topic before going in this article. Broadly, we are dividing the whole Internet users in to two subgroups : Those who write blog and those who read blog. Obviously, intermingling will happen; but to discuss the topic Group psychology and the blog phenomenon; it will be easier to divide in this way.

Group Psychology acting among blog readers

There are three kinds of blog readers:

• Those who search the Internet and read blogs, bookmarks them
• Those who hears from some one that your blog is a good place, directly goes there
• Those who search the  Internet for some information and closes the browser when satisfied

These first two groups can obviously give a positive or negative effect on the direct traffic of a particular blog. Group Psychology plays here in this way, “well, he is saying its good, then have a look”. So, as a blog writer, your work is to please the first group to influence the Group Psychology positively for your blog. This can be done through:

• Writing good answers to the comments
• Replying the comments honestly
• Following back someone who has just followed you in Twitter
• Writing better and unique content, designing the blog neatly, decreasing the page loading time : all those ways  those are better for a blog.

The biggest influence of Group psychology plays when it comes about social networking for the blog : more the Twitter and FaceBook followers, more you will get everyday growing. That is why, during the first few months, even a good blog does not get more “Likes” or Twitter followers.  Most people gets “blind” after a certain digits of numbers placed side by side. This depends on the person, his / her personality (Type A personalities are unlikely to follow or like), educational qualifications, age, job etc.

Group Psychology acting among blog writers

Group Psychology can adversely affect the writing. Type AB or Type B personality (Type A = very serious attitude; Type B = “Well, lets see what happens next” ; Type AB = in between) blog writers are often affected by what others are writing or changing the design of he site.

On the other hand, a blogger with Type A or Type AB personality will take any change of his / her rival’s blog as an challenge. For example; you are my rival and of Type A personality, you noticed my blog is getting more traffic after reducing its page loading time. You will be motivated to reduce more than me after thorough study of page speed and its positive effect on Google search engine result.

Conclusion and further thoughts on Group Psychology and blogging

Human is a social animal and can not go out side this Group Psychology phenomenon. If you think carefully, you will notice that search engines itself might get biased by this Group Psychology : more a website link gets clicked for a particular search result, more it will come up. To reduce this negative effect, Google employs the stay time on that site after clicking the link and numerous other factors.

It is likely if a blog post has no comments; visitors will not comment too. To encourage comments exploiting the Group Psychology, some bloggers approves the spams (which is never good) or pays professional commenter. In the same way, you will see, there are “members” for forums, Tweeter followers, FaceBook fans are sold through various websites.

In future, this increasing exploitation of Group Psychology, might increase the burden of carrying cost of a blog or a forum or the worse, it will be harder to start a new blog and make it established.