A Small Trend In Blogging
The world of blogging is changing fast and the trend away from daily blogging seems to be moving fast.
Here’s my tip for the next trend in blogging – fewer posts.
There’s an awful lot of blog-guilt around – people wishing they blogged more often, or that they had better content. Blogs were originally conceived as a diary-style platform, but why should that approach dictate content? Not everyone has the time to post daily, or create compelling content that frequently. Blogs are, by definition, updated content, but why be obsessed about daily update? What if the focus is episodic in a broader sense; weekly, or monthly updates for example.
Consider Maira Kalman’s blog, The Principles of Uncertainty. This is a once a month blog, very high touch content and from what I can tell, quite high traffic levels as well. Would you tune into a once a month or once a quarter blog with meaningful interaction from your favourite author or musician or artist? I would.
Moreover, there are some new blog designs that are less obviously journalised. Take a look at the Hemingway theme for WordPress – a big break from the traditional blog design (and closer in many ways to the layout of old static pages). I think this is a great theme for the more infrequent blogger (incorporate some asides and maybe some flickr images and there is still enough width to maintain interest.
Of course, some of you may be wondering; won’t that cost me readers? Well maybe. But the fact is most of us will never even get close to the A-list. The typical blog only ever has the potential to reach small (in internet terms) audiences. This is not a bad thing, it is a very good thing. In a pre-internet world, you had to guarantee a pretty big audience for an idea, in order to get it past the gatekeepers in the TV, radio and print world. Now, the gatekeepers can be bypassed and the public is available to you all over the world. Lots of worthwhile content can find a thriving place online that would never have been public in the old media hierarchy.
Given that, it makes sense to maximise the depth of connection (and complicity) with your audience. I think that is why we are going to see some bloggers going for quality over quantity, trying to strike a deeper connection with their core audience, further blurring the gap between blog content and print/new media content.
In simple terms this means fewer posts. Watch out for it.
