Here are a few take home quotes from Seth Godin’s “Who’s There?” Free e-book which I read this afternoon (and ask usual with Seth’s writing – enjoyed):
‘People have a choice (4.5 million choices, in fact) and nobody is going to read your blog, link to your blog or quote your blog unless there’s something in it for them.’
Spot on the money here. The take home question here is ‘what do you readers get out of your blog?’
‘Blogs work best when people read them over time. One frame of a movie isn’t enough to win an Academy Award, and one post on a blog isn’t enough to make a huge difference.’
I love this concept. Too often I see bloggers posting in haphazard ways that seem to have little forethought for the overall strategy and direction of their blog. One of the things I’ve noticed over my years of blogging is just how quickly you can lose readers simply by posting one or two posts that are out of character or which offend your regular readers.
While sometimes its tempting to post in the heat of the moment in response to something that gets you worked up – perhaps a better blogging practice would be to take a deep breath and give such posts a little time to sit with you before posting. This could decrease the chances of alienating your readership with posts that detract from the overall direction of where your blog is going.
Connected to this idea is this last quote:
‘So every post on a “viral blog” should be designed to get you another RSS subscription.
Every blog post should be designed to be important enough to get another blog to eagerly post a link or quote you or reprint the whole thing.’
Now I don’t completely agree with Seth here – there are some posts where you may not be aiming to be quoted or linked to – but the concept is good. Perhaps before hitting ‘publish’ a good question to ask is ‘does this post add to or subtract from the vision and goals that I have for this blog?’
