2008-07-07

Blogging

Since I've read these slides by Jyri Engeström at an OpenSocial meeting I've been thinking if writing shorter and more frequent blogs would be the right way to go.
At the moment I write at two blogs and one microblog. But I also have five inactive blogs.
Here I try to discuss ideas that some people (including me) are really interested in thinking about a little further, to understand what is going on in the environment around us and how it makes a difference in our lives, so that maybe we can shape the future to our best interest. The posts usually have a minimum length so that the ideas can be expressed with a beginning, middle and end. At my other blog I write short news on a more general and popular theme, geek stuff. If I count the number of words written at each blog, they are more or less the same, although at my other blog they are spread in a larger number of posts.
Now, let's see some numbers from Google Analytics. For the blog with shorter posts I have four times the number of visitors I have here, but the average time on site is exactly the same. That almost makes me think I should focus on writing shorter posts with more frequency. On the other hand, the feedback I get from the readers of this blog is much more insightful. So I'd be trading quantity over quality. And I don't want to do that.
However, I can't say there is a linear function between the length of the posts and the value it adds to my own life. When it comes to microblogging, if I interact with the right community of people I can extract useful information while not spending too much time writing or filtering a flood of posts.
Of course, considering that the content of my blogs are very different from each other and that my audiende is very limited I can't really generalize my findings. But one thing that every blogger should keep in mind is who is the target audience, what they expect from you, and what you expect from them.