DISQUS

colinwalker · 1 year ago

There are always times when we have a down turn - whether collectively or individualy. I've been there and at one point didn't blog for months. Burn out, or just other stuff happening? Sometimes this just don't seem as important. Blogging also goes in cycles: we get the same topics roll round the blogosphere and seeing the same things again and again reduces the enthusiasm.

Blogging certainly isn't dead but a lot of people are realising that the blogosphere isn't the Elysian Fields of our dreams. Our sphere of influence is actually very small (even for the biggest of names) and there is an inherent frustration over the message being restricted to a small audience regardless of the quality of work. The desire to constantly reach a wider audience is what drives the need to be perfect (I am as guilty as the next man) but you have a point about being "good enough". If we realise that no matter how brillaint any pieve of work it's influence is limited then th epressure is off to a degree. We are always our won worst critics and put more pressure on ourselves than anyone else can.

Now, if I can just finish this post I've been working on for 3 days....

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

Great points Colin!

maverickwoman · 1 year ago

A great question and one I have even posted under the same heading on my personal blog a long time ago as I struggled to juggle a senior leadership position in a large corporation, leading internal social media adoption and blogging and wikiing there as role model, single parenting of 2 teenage girls, maintaining a relationship with a significant other as well as friendships in the non-online world, and trying to fit in a physical exercise routine. The result was that my personal blog only happened between midnight and 2 am, or not at all. I punished myself to be regular, at least 3 posts a week....but I slept only 4 hours a night and my kids said I was present but not available.

I arrived at the conclusion that unless I had something original or compelling to say that has NOT already been said, it was ok to enjoy the blogs of others and post only when I enjoyed the experience. Besides, as a leader, I find "listening" through blogs a much more valuable ROI that shooting my own mouth off for the sake of creating an online following/ personal brand. The latter is valuable at times, but not essential to my success or the success of my team. Word of mouth the traditional way still does the job if you create value. Twitter and Facebook does the rest for me

Joe Dawson · 1 year ago

In the words of Bob Dylan the times they are a-changing, where are we heading? No one is sure but that's what makes it so great to be involved; Blogs, Comments, Content, API, Social Networks, Email etc. I am subscribed to the Jason List and I am enjoying reading his views, he's taken it right back with email dialogue. The splintered communication, innovation trying to break trends, recycling old methods we are in the process of reinventing the wheel. I am thinking of creating a 21st Century form of the Bayeux Tapestry anyone up for the RSS??

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

Jason has a unique perspective on his list thing - it will be interesting to see what comes of it. My main issue with it is that it removes the power of his readers to share the content they respond with others. I think Jason wants more of a one-on-one conversation though, which, if that achieves his purposes, is fine.

tigertwo · 1 year ago

I think this is a natural progression - at least among those people who are at the early adopter stages of technology. I do still see that blogging is a useful tool for the 'lay person' (that term is not at all meant in a derogatory fashion) - it is a reasonably easy to understand method of starting conversation with your audience which some people have never tried before. As such, although the blogging craze might be drawing to its natural conclusion, it will settle down as part of the backbone of a good online presence.

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

Agreed completely. It's important most of all that bloggers don't stress about it. Just let it happen and it will take off on its own.

swissfondue · 1 year ago

Excellent post. I tried to put similar thoughts into 140 characters on Twitter yesterday to celebrate my 400th tweet. "Hundreds are now four, Goal is not to bore, Would have crafted more, Yet ennui I foreswore."

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

Awesome! Glad I could be part of your 400th Tweet!

Marcin_Grodzicki · 1 year ago

I got into blogging because I wanted to promote a startup I am building. It proved to be a lot more addictive than I thought it could be. Unfortunately for me the addiction means consuming a lot more content than I (probably) need. But my point lies elsewhere: blogging matures, no doubt about it. The advertising money is here, side ventures emerge (conferences etc.), PR folks hitting you, disclosures of conflicts of interest - who heard about those in the early days? As blogging matures, formerly great blogs now turned blog networks work like regular magazines: posting frequently, with not much care for content and hardly any comment conversation. PageView binds them all. This is why new blogs emerge. This is why people read Louis, and why they always look for independent interesting people (Louis, if your head is getting to big, I have a 4kg frying pan ready to meet it).

It's sad to admit, but money kind of ruins it all - whenever blogger starts treating blogging like a job to live on, his quality goes down. Or maybe it's just a fact that doing content for the masses is a bit different than doing it just for the hell of it. This is why I write (and comment by the way) only if something moves me, or I really want to share a thought with you guys. If I just want to get traffic for my startup, I have Adwords ;)

Racquel Lyle · 1 year ago

I also love doing blog but sometimes because of so many things to do, I tend to forget to update my blog. But still even 3 times a month I make it a sure that I visit it and put something to become active again.

David Sonenberg · 1 year ago

I agree that there is not enough original content in blogging, but I also think that blogs act as a way to filter the masses of information available from people who's opinion and judgment you trust.

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

That's very true, but I think a lot of that can be done via MicroBlogging, as a discussion.

Matik72 · 1 year ago

Being new the world of blogging I am still finding my way and by this I mean the direction or purpose of my blog. It has begun with trying to give a look into what is going on in my life. I am pretty sure that I am not the first to have these issues to contend with. Right now I blog as an expression of what is popping out of my mind at the end or beginning of the day. I tend to use Twitter as the micro-blog slash way to keep up with the more mundane of peoples doings.

DGentry · 1 year ago

"It's actually okay to only post once or twice a week."

I'd relax this even further: its ok to post only as often as you have something interesting to say. Bloggers who focus on social media tend to post very frequently, because the social media space is innovating very rapidly right now. Bloggers in other spaces post on a very different schedule. Steve Yegge (http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/) posts twice per month. Paul Graham (http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html) posts roughly once per month, as does Joel Spolsky (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/).

Personally I aim for two posts per month, and each post takes a number of hours to write.

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

Exactly. :-)

Shey · 1 year ago

Great points Jesse, this was a good read. A couple thoughts:

"Avoid posting just to state an opinion about another person's post" --
This may not be entirely avoidable but I believe it will definitely combat what we know as the echo chamber. But sometimes your reply to someone's post is just too much for a comment box.

"Lastly, settle for "good enough"!"
I think this is a great point -- often it's the "good enough" posts that leave room for more discussion.

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

Thanks Shey - when it's too much for a comment box, that's when I think it is often appropriate to post opinion. Often I like to do short blurbs though, and see where the conversation takes me. If something new comes out of the conversation, then I'll blog about it.

marco · 1 year ago

Great post Jesse - thanks for this.

I have never (and probably will never) considered myself a "blogger" so taking the time to self-promote, maximize and tweak things to increase traffic has never been worth the time to me. Even so I have been too busy to add a couple of posts I had been thinking about or by the time I sat down to write them I realized I had pured out most of my original thoughts on the matter into FriendFeed.

Great reminder and tips - thanks man (and thanks Louis for giving Jesse the opportunity to guest post)

jrsven · 1 year ago

My most popular posts have the most grammatical errors and took me the least amount of time to write, ironically enough!

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

I think so long as it is readable, often your readers won't care. It's the point and message that most readers care about.

Sena Hecking · 1 year ago

Great post! I go for quality rather than quantity when blogging. My exposure could be greater if I blogged more, but if I don't have a compelling reason to do so, I often wait. Twitter is a good tool to share quick links and thoughts. Twitter sometimes makes it difficult to really explain why or the value of what you are sharing. This leaves it up to the reader to deduce the value or meaning.

Mark Evans · 1 year ago

Excellent advice. Personally, I've become increasingly comfortable using my blog as the primary way to communicate my ideas, thoughts, etc. Twitter comes in handy for micro-thoughts.

John Furrier · 1 year ago

I agree with most of your points but would add that posting about someone elses post makes sense to share the comment and link to the audience. Disqus is a bit distracting but important to share on the site where a comment is relevant. For example I would leave this comment here but would post an expanded thought on my blog with a link (in that case a full on blog post would be ok).

nice job Louis

digitatodd · 1 year ago

I have spent the last hour or so reading over several posts here, I am not sure why it took until today to discover it but there is a lot of great reading here. I am relatively new to the blog/micro-blog world, but this article has really given me the sense that I am moving in the right direction. My own research into this venue led me to some of the same conclusions you have made here. I think that maybe the last point in your post might be misleading, I leave posts as drafts for several days sometimes and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Just because an experienced blogger can get a post out in under 30 minutes does not mean everyone can or should. In some cases ( i am sure you have seen them ) its a really bad idea, lots of spelling and grammar mistakes as well as incoherent thoughts as if no care was taken in posting at all.

markivey · 1 year ago

You've raised some timely issues. Count me in as one who's been cutting back his blogging activities. Part of it's time--I'm swamped just keeping up with my regular clients. But on another level, I've never thought of myself as a "blogger," but a writer--I've been writing for many years (business reporter, author, corporate writer, etc), and this was just one more platform. It was a sobering adjustment---going from huge magazine audiences to the micro-blog audiences...and eventually I found it hard to justify the time investment. I find it more interesting, for now, to hunt down interesting subjects and postings (like this one) on Twitter, Friendfeed, etc, and try to comment and join the conversation. Charline LI (Groundswell) says she only blogs when she really has something to say, which is my approach currently.

Jim McNeely · 1 year ago

Very insightful. I enjoy reading the post of veteran bloggers.