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This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:
See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project
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BLOGTASTIC: Goldilocks and three blogs
Your blog provides an open opportunity for you to write and share your thoughts. You could write about anything and everything you want. Your blog could be the place for you to share your business insights, restaurant reviews, and political opinions. All of those topics are legitimate blogging topics. However, you want to make sure that your blog develops a unique focus and personality.
Some variety is good. Too much variety (especially if it is incoherent) hurts.
Let’s look at the issue from the perspective of a blog reader. We’ll call her Goldilocks. She’s a highly-motivated, busy professional. She’s plugged into the Internet, and she stays at the cutting edge of technology that allows her to organize her life.
One day, Goldilocks looks at her RSS feed, and she finds links to three great articles within different blogs. She decides to explore each blog further.
Goldilocks is excited by the post from the first blog. It’s exactly what she needed. She considers subscribing to the blog, and she scans the blog’s recent posts. Goldilocks quickly realizes that the blogger is a one-trick pony. The blogger says the same thing over and over. Goldilocks is impatient. She wants fresh ideas every day. So, she decides to move onwards.
Then, Goldilocks looks at the second blog. While the one post was great, she notices that the blogger doesn’t have any focus. The posts can literally be on any and every topic. The writer is a good writer, but most of the posts will not be relevant to Goldilocks. She feels that there’s more noise than signal here.
Goldilocks decides that this second blog will frustrate her, because she’ll be constantly reading junk in the hope that one post will be relevant to her. She decides not to subscribe to this blog.
Goldilocks then explores the third blog. Even though it’s new blog, she skims a few recent posts and realizes that the blogger offers the right mix of thoughtful insights, variety, and wit. The blogger doesn’t repeat the same points, and more importantly the blogger chooses topics that pleasantly surprise her. Goldilocks can’t predict what this third blogger will write about, but she knows she wants to read more. So, Goldilocks subscribes to this third blog.
As a blogger, you speak to your audience. Your readers hunger for variety, but they really don’t want too much variety. They expect to read quality posts that are relevant to their life and work.
While you don’t need to be a great writer to be a blogger, you have to work on your writing to make your blogs interesting. If blogging is part of your personal branding strategy, then you should spend time honing your topic-selection and writing skills.
Remember that everyone (including your readers) likes positive surprises. When your posts exceed your readers’ expectations, they will be happy to come back for more. They’ll probably also link to your post through their blog, spreading the news about your great work!
Blogging Tip: Keep your blog interesting and relevant
Most people are not reading your blog because it is part of their job responsibility. Now, if you are a world-expert in some topic, it’s possible that someone’s boss will tell their employees to keep up with your blog. For example, if you work in the field of search engine optimization, your boss might tell you to read Matt Cutts’ official blog at Google.
Most of the blogging world isn’t that fortunate. Your blog needs to be interesting enough so that readers want to come back again and again. However, interesting should never be at the cost of relevance.
Think about it. The same rule applies for every communication beyond your blog. You have to be relevant to your readers and the people you know. That’s what will keep them coming back for more.
Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow
