It’s been three weeks since I’ve written anything. The last time I did was in Argentina when a co-worker sent me a great link and I more or less didn’t have to to think at all.
The month of April was abysmal as far as posting was concerned. The crazy thing is, I probably had more good ideas and - for lack of a better way of putting it - “desire” to write than I’ve had in a while.
So why the disconnect? Why is semi-serious to serious blogging so hard? It’s not hard to do necessarily, just hard to maintain. Once you get into it, it’s like a beast that you can’t re-cage. One that must be fed regularly… either feed it or it dies.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as it relates to organizations and people who are more or less “scared” of blogging. Like old CIOs and CTOs at, oh, I don’t know… large nonprofits for instance. Conceptually it’s a very easy thing to do. Essentially: write down your thoughts, hit post, and allow people to read and interact with your ideas.
In practice though it’s more complicated. Particularly at a certain threshold of readership, there needs to be a certain level of professionalism established. Your name is associated with it. Your credibility. You can’t just sit down and ramble or babble. In some cases one develops an online profile and bio in lieu of a resume or offline reputation. Your blog and your words become the thing that people most strongly associate with you. Clearly that needs to be protected, and yet, does it really have to be that complicated to give a forum and voice to our non-journalistic perspectives? To our on-the-ground opinions?
How well articulated should a thought be before it’s posted? I used to say “just put it out there…” but now I’m not as sure.
I have to admit I’ve come to believe that while tools allowing us to blog, develop online social networks, stay continuously connected and updated are wonderful and can be used for brilliant purpose; they are simply not for everyone. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. And then of course, in some of the cases of those who should write and share more often there is often a question of whether they can - be it time or some other restriction self imposed or otherwise.
And thus it is with my blog and so many others. As I’ve been out of the country, at events, going to meetings, yada yada yada over the past month, writing a blog post has just gotten harder and harder. It’s something I love to do. It’s something I love to connect around through the sharing of ideas, opinions, strategies and tools, but sometimes it’s just freakin’ hard either to make time - adding links and supporting resources - or to feel like the short, quick thought you have warrants a post.
What are others’ strategies for keeping up? How do you turn your “shoulds” into “done?”
Two blogs that I really admire for keeping everything up to date despite their authors having very busy schedules are David Alpert’s www.greatergreaterwashington.com and Jared Garolnick’s www.technotheory.com. How they do it, I’m not sure, but hat’s off guys!
4 responses so far ↓
1 Brad // May 12, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Amen, brother.
2 Jake Brewer // May 13, 2008 at 12:39 am
This may sound strange, but I seriously feel better just by having posted something… anything… tonight. It’s like I needed a fix.
Thanks, dude!
3 Kevin Markham // May 13, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Great post, Jake. I struggle with the quantity vs. quality question — Given a limited amount of time to blog, do you put together one amazing post a month, or three semi-interesting posts a week?
In the short run, I think that quantity wins out, because the more volume you have the more likely you are to get noticed. But in the long run, especially as more and more people start using feed readers, I think that quality will win out: There will be so many enticing feeds out there that subscribers will THANK you for only putting out quality posts, so that when they do read your stuff, it’s not a waste of their time.
Wait a minute, scratch that… the only real solution is to become a professional blogger.
4 Jared Goralnick // May 13, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I don’t have the answer for you, Jake. But I appreciate the shoutout. Here’s a little background and my explanation.
I’ve been blogging for years–8.5 personally and 2.5 professionally. But only since the new year have I forced myself to put out the schedule I have, and only then has it really helped to build readership. So the question is why the new motivation? I finally aligned what was a hobby with my business. I recognized that building a brand online and holding onto readers would be important if I wanted to run a web product company. So that was my rationalization–I didn’t feel right putting the time in before, but now that I have a bigger reason to do it (or at least a justifiable one), I make time out of the business day (or evening).
As for the quantity v quality thing, Kevin definitely hit on part of it–quantity with some very good quality is more important when you’re building your audience. Lack of quantity won’t get readers, but lack of quality won’t keep them. So essentially you need to really kick ass in the beginning. The Growing Life is an example of a site that launched fast. Skelliewag is an example of a site in maintenence mode that hasn’t lost its readers with less regular content.
Of course there’s more to building readers than what you publish–partipation in other online media helps a lot. But I’ll cut this lesson short here… good luck, Jake!
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