Hello friends!
I've joined a great site called 20 Something Bloggers. One of my first orders of business was to get some feedback from people unfamiliar with my blog on whether it was something they'd read. The consensus seemed to be "Your blog is great. I really enjoy your writing and what you write about. But your posts are all really long, and I don't like that. You should make some posts shorter."
I have a couple of thoughts about this:
- If you like the content, it should be OK for it to be a little long. But if the post length turns you off from reading anything in the first place, then that's not good.
- I could try varying up my post length, but I don't want to throw off my regular readers. When one of my favorite blogs pops up in my Reader and then I see it's only a short post, I'm usually disappointed. But then, maybe I'm nobody's favorite blog :)
- Occasionally I do have thoughts for a short post -- something like one "take" out of 7 Quick Takes -- but I don't want to get annoying with too many posts, which is why I stick to my thrice-a-week schedule.
- On a related note: I post Tuesday and Thursday evenings when I get home from work, but most people don't read them until the next day. Maybe I should just say I post on Wednesdays and Fridays and schedule my posts to publish then?
I'm just going to post a comment, because I don't really care WHEN you post, and honestly, I didn't know you posted on a schedule. I like what you write; your posts often leave me thinking about things differently or even more in depth.
ReplyDeleteI don't think your posts are too long! But then again, I'm a 30 something (31), so since I'm old, I'm used to lots of words, hahaha.
Actually, it's too bad I'm old, I'd be interested in joining up with a "group" like that...anything to get more readers, feedback, etc. I feel like I write for myself, only, and I don't have a real theme or topic...
@Rabbit
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback! There is talk on the site of creating a 30SB site for those who are "growing out of" the 20SB site.
If I don't get any other feedback, I may try occasionally posting some shorter posts on off-days when I have thoughts, and just seeing if anyone gets annoyed by the number of posts :)
My advice is to worry as little as possible about "rules" for how long or frequent your posts are. You're not a magazine that owes its subscribers a predictable pattern of content.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you might think as you're writing each post about whether it NEEDS to be as long as it is or might be more effective by getting to the main point more quickly, leaving out some details, or putting the details in separate articles and linking to them.
@'Becca
ReplyDeleteI may not be a magazine, but I do want to build up a readership, and some kind of consistency is important for that. (Or at least that's conventional wisdom.) I subscribe to a lot of blogs and so I try to keep a balance of how many total posts I have to read each day, given how often each feed usually updates (e.g., I know X number will post every day, and X% of the rest will post on any given day). Maybe that's just me, but I like to deliver the same kind of consistency that I expect from others.
Conciseness is something I struggle with, though, so I will continue to work on making sure my posts aren't unnecessarily long!
reminded me of an article i read recently...hope it helps!
ReplyDeletehttp://HerNashville.com/chic-geek/your-voice-finding-it-and-fine-tuning-it
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThanks! This is something I've thought about, whether I should narrow the focus of my blog, but there's really no one thing I would write to write about all the time. Plus I realized that most of the blogs I enjoy reading are similar to mine, which might be summed up as "advice-giving and advice-seeking for a happier life." Right now I'm not trying to make any money from blogging, so I'd rather continue blogging about what's interesting to me.