Daily Content Decisions
It has become really hard to decide what I want to write about on a daily basis on this blog. For the most part it has become a haven for my personal thoughts, ambitions, and what is going on in my day to day life, but I look out into the Blogosphere and realize there are millions if not tens of millions of blogs out there just like mine.
How do I make my site, my blog worth reading? I currently have only five people watching my site through Bloglines, and only around sixty uniques a day. Those people are reading about my day to day life, and I know I don’t have sixty friends that read this site, so am I just boring the rest of the people?
I could talk about technology, but since my job is writing about technology, it makes it seem like a chore to do it here. I don’t really consider myself a specialist in any one area, like most big name bloggers who are developers or designers. I am not especially good at marketing or programming. I know enough of just about everything to get me by. So what do I talk about? What service or value do I provide my readers? I could review movies. I could talk about software I use to make my life easier and review each of them. I could post stories I have written, or things I am working on.
Posting my Phoenixtheme template for WordPress on here a few days ago created a great amount of traffic geared towards this site, and I had more people stop by in one day than I did in all of the last week.
I could give a summary of some of the interesting things I found during my searching for work, but if you really wanted to read those things, you would jump over to the Bloggy Network, and read them on each of the content specific blogs that have been set up.
I read Darren Rowse (Problogger.net) every day, and I one thing he continually remarks on is the fact that people need to find their blogging voice, and I have read many posts lately on other blogs asking “What value do you bring to your readers?”
I don’t have an answer at this point, but I hope to really work hard at increasing the quality of the content on this site, and if you have noticed anything on my site that you would like me to write more about, please let me know. I love to write.
2 Responses to Daily Content Decisions
-
sween Said,
December 21, 2005 @ 2:34 pm
I’ve had the same thoughts myself. At times I have found my blog degenerating into a link blog, which is done much better by sites like Boing Boing and digg.com. So I’ve made the decision to try and write more “original content”. In my case, it’s less biographical and more leaning towards the weird and (hopefully) funny. But that is where I find my blog voice taking me.
I like sharing cool links with people, but what I have to offer is *my* voice — for good or ill. So that’s what I’m focusing on.
It also comes down to another question: are your writing your blog just to get bigger numbers, or are you doing it to share your voice with people.
My advice: worry less about your numbers.
(Also, your Bloglines stats can be misleading. I switched to Feedburner for my feeds and discovered that Bloglines was only 1/6th of my feed readership.)
-
David Said,
December 21, 2005 @ 3:09 pm
Jason, great to see you still read my site here and there.
I guess the main reason I write this blog is mostly to connect with people that have similar interests as myself and keep my friends informed of what I am up to. Those two things are very different, and I should almost have two sites up, but both of those things are what I hope to do with my one blog.I will work on worrying less about numbers, but the numbers sometimes give purpose. If I realize others are not reading what I have to say, then why say anything?
There is almost pressure to perform just because there are actually people watching and reading what I have to say, and watching stats is a little addictive.
And thanks for the great tip on the Bloglines thing.
P.S. I like your blog, and read it atleast 3x a week, so keep up the good work. (Sorry I don’t comment but I have been so busy with work, I have not been leaving the comments that people deserve on their blogs.)
RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI
