The long and the short of posts - the soapie versus the soapbox
Darren quotes secrets of the A List and offers his own take on what works including highly targeted content and more posts equalling more entry points.
This is something that I’ve enjoyed watching Chris Abraham employ for a fair bit now on the advice of Doc Searls and with which I’d agree… if you want a lot of readers, lots of links and a place in the pantheon then you’d sure as heck best be peddling frequent bite size content with a good line in cyclical stories / issues, some political drama if possible and a fair bit of ‘not the first but the first you’ve read’ linking, your blog soapie if you will.
>>
But there’s also something that you have to confront, especially if you’re looking at blogging to facilitate streams of revenue other than advertising, and they are, specifically that:
To be honest I’m not a great fan of TV which could have a lot to do with this. I figure that we live in a bite-sized, soapie society, suffering from collective ADD and rarely able to (let alone keen on) consideration and depth of experience.
In this we are the losers and so is the web. I’m not arguing that there’s no place for short posts or that we should be posting academic essays… just that we could do with less soapie, more soapbox and that we can’t (and shouldn’t) all want to be A-Listers.
Find expert WordPress and WordPress MultiUser (WPMU) development and consulting at Incsub.
About:
May 26th, 2005 at 7:00 am
[…] Sep 04
On the soapie or the soapbox? 2005-05-26
Some thoughts on writing long / short blog posts and the unlikelyn […]
May 26th, 2005 at 8:13 am
If collective knowledge endeavors have value created in their diversity, then the blogosphere and related milieus (i.e. social bookmarking databases) will benefit far more from folks not seeking a-list status. The world of social bookmarking is a good analogy, perhaps. Who are the a-list social bookmarkers? There are some folks whose Furl archives and feeds I really admire and make use of (not a-list bloggers, either), but I find the del.icio.us all-users feed to be one of the most valuable in my aggregator.
Similarly, elite status in the blogosphere ultimately contributes far less to the collective good than a nugget of highly useful content every once in awhile in your blog. My site gets more traffic to a comparative review of wiki software options than to all my other articles combined. I wrote it mostly because I couldn’t find anyone else who had, and I was already doing the comparisons for my consulting work. I don’t feel like blogging about wikis these days, but I appreciate that wiki-related old content on my site provides value to people seeking that information. That makes me feel good, despite my small overall traffic numbers.
May 26th, 2005 at 9:24 am
Yes, definitely, niche contend is good… fascinating that you draw on two of the main points that were realised at Blogtalk Downunder over the weekend by the keynotes. Rebecca Blood talked about citizen scientists and participatory experts and Mark Bernstein looked at protecting the blogosphere - you can find a podcast of his presentation here: http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?p=123
All of this convergence makes me feel like we’re at an important point.
May 26th, 2005 at 9:49 am
Interesting stuff James (not as good as the footy though, ah the BBC webcasts saved my day!). As you indicate, doesn’t it come down to intended purpose? I blog about weekly and my purpose is usually to synthesise my own reflections as I build (hopefully) towards a PhD. Some of the things I write is no doubt naive nonsense, some hopefully has merit. So for me this is mostly about my professional lifelong learning, with occasional attempts to provoke discussion amongst colleagues and students who pick my blog up on aggregators connected to work.
May 26th, 2005 at 10:07 am
SBS over in os Oz for me :o) Started writing this at half time!
I guess my question for you would be whether you think you would blog without an audience and what that means about what you’re doing? I get what you’re saying about your interaction with colleagues but do you have any larger purpose? Grander scheme?
Granted it doesn’t have to be and, in the end on the whole I don’t think it will be (we’re going forwards backwards as they say, perhaps) but I think in 99% of cases blogs are motivated through a combination of expression and audience.
May 26th, 2005 at 10:33 am
That’s a good question and the answer is no I wouldn’t blog if I didn’t think that there was an audience at least some of the time. I think that my entries have different intentions, and as such the potential audience (the one I have in my mind when I am writing a particular blog) does effect the what I write. I am still learning this, but I am starting to understand what type of Blog will be more likely to draw a response. As the research above shows it is typically the shorter Blog, but I also find that the inclusion of a diagram of a model or idea helps.
I am fairly sure I don’t have a grander purpose, other than my personally grand/larger purpose to get a PhD.
I am sure that ICT (including blogs) is most powerful as a tool for expression and evaluation - cornerstones of learning. The evaluative power comes from feedback that can be generated internally, but also externally and that is where the audience or even the perceived audience is valuable.
May 27th, 2005 at 2:58 pm
Blogging interaction — A sane posting strategy
Finally, a well-known blog consultant talks about the value of more in-depth blog posts. I have two tactical suggestions for making these work: a newspaper writing style, and editing long posts to the main message.
May 28th, 2005 at 1:32 am
Thank you for the kudos, James. I base all my blogging on the advice from Doc Searls. Mixing it up is essential too… but making sure you have a comprehensive ping server list. Here’s the hint, though: the more you update your blog, even with short little posts — and this is key, so listen — the more often the search engines come a knock knock knockin’!
Bonus!
May 28th, 2005 at 3:52 am
[…] ayo 2005
Teoría bitacoril
¿Posts cortos, posts largos? James Farmer, blog consultant, piensa que la n […]
May 28th, 2005 at 12:35 pm
That is one pretty neat list of ping servers! Thanks Chris!
June 1st, 2005 at 9:59 am
High Octane Blogging — Jeremy Wright weighs in
Jeremy Wright is providing some excellent feedback to The High Octane Blogging Bootcamp leading me to feel the coaching model we are testing here will work. Next up is Susie Gardner of Buzz Marketing with Blogs fame.