3 Reasons People Don't Actually Read Your Blog
written by Allan on September 22, 2008
Sure, you might have a few subscribers, but do people actually read your content?
People like software that’s easy to use. Software that has a low pain threshold. The same is true about blogs. Your blog should be about your reader, not about your ego.
Here are some mistakes authors make when writing blog posts:
1) They have no personality and their writing is reflective of this.
2) Their posts are too long and filled with fluff. I could go on and on about this point. There are a million, billion things to say about people who take up space on the page as thought their adwords revenue is based on the number of characters they use. There are also countless examples of blogs that are way, way, way to wordy. Sometime one word will work better than writing a whole paragraph. Do I really need to say more about this?! Wake up people I am trying to tell you something here.
3) Their posts are pure vanilla and contain no opinion on the topic. Unless you are reporting the news, give your opinion, that is why people are reading you.
Still don't get it?
Who has 15 minutes to spend reading a long post?
Who wants to wade through the fluff to find your point?
If you have a point, make it clear and don't be ashamed of your view.
Make your writing an example of good UI. Make it thoughtful, filled with expressive language and to the point.
If you do these things, I guarantee you will have as many readers as we do. Which is two. You and a guy in Slobozia with an internet connection so whacked that the only pages he can load are this one and TechCrunch. Poor guy.
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Allan loves his family more than breathing. He lives in Panama City, Florida & grew up washing cars at his family's car washes. Oh and Allan hasn't worn underwear since 2004.
7 Comments
Well said, Allan. I’ve been working on a series of blog posts. At one time they were combined in a single, third-person narrative. While it was preachy, I don’t think that was the proper route to opinionated.
I’ve found a couple things valuable as I rewrite theses posts:
1) Speak from experience. Share experience rather than implying experience. Posts like this make implied opinion an option.
2) Make use of story-writing techniques. Add in some simile, don’t run from alliteration. I think stylized writing puts a hook in the reader’s brain to hang your name on.
Those are the main reasons I read your blog posts. I appreciate the occasional long / dense content posts (Rails Links), but the short posts with one tidbit of (rant/observation/tip) are great. Easy to digest and don’t require a huge time commitment.
I’m trying to incorporate some of these ideas into my posts, in addition to posting more frequently. The occasional high density post with technical subject matter (IMHO), adds more value to the Internet at large, so I’ll still post some of that, just to keep my karma up.
Tell that Steve Yegge.
Keep it up! I’ll keep reading as long as this dial up connection holds.
I concur. There are some posts of mine that are outright rants, and I reserve the right for those, but most of mine are to the point unless I’m doing an in depth review of software or hardware.
All the LE stuff rocks, including the blog. Keep it up.
Umm … TechCrunch doesn’t work for me. :)
Nice post. I beg to differ, but it’s still a good post.
Bingo! Whenever I visit your blog, I ll always have somethin to take home. U rock man!