November 26th, 2008 by Lloyd Gofton
Don’t worry, this isn’t a post about the economic slow down, I think we’ve had quite enough of that for now. No, this post comes as a result of Jon Henley’s article on Guardian.co.uk today titled: ‘The bloggers who take it one post at a time’. It’s a great piece, based in turn on a recent article from the New York Times titled: Blogging at a snail’s pace.
As you can probably gather, both pieces overview a more relaxed approach to blogging, quality over quantity if you like, where the object is not the first to get a post published on a breaking issue, but the one that can add most value.
Both of these pieces refer to Todd Sieling’s ‘A slow blog manifesto’ written in 2006 by the technology consultant from British Columbia, who formulated a structure for the slow blogging movement, saying: “Slow blogging is a rejection of immediacy, it is an affirmation that not all things are worth reading are written quickly.”
Having digested these articles, I felt it was worth pointing out that they have a lot of relevancy in the communications industry, and would be good advice to take on board for any blogger. In fact it’s something that I recommend to my clients: don’t try to be the first on the scene, try to add to the conversation.
It’s still true that blogging, and the wider circle of social media, moves quickly. The last few years have seen a constant push to get more information out in as short a time frame as possible. Twitter is an example of the success of quick fire candid comment, but blogging gives us the opportunity to add more than just news or speed to an issue. It gives us the opportunity to put our opinion across and delve deeper into the discussion, or at least look at a different angle.
It’s too easy to forget that blogging isn’t a race; we need to listen to our community and understand what would be most useful, to be relevant in a conversation. If that’s speed and constant availability, Twitter is probably a much better outlet for you.
If your subscribers read your posts because they appreciate your knowledge or like your take on issues, then that’s what they want to hear, whether that’s an hour or two days after the issue has broken. I myself often like to sit back and see how an issue develops before posting or commenting, it makes sense to get the whole picture before joining in, and simply joining in shouldn’t be a key motivator.
So, what have I taken from the slow blog theory? Well, affirmation of a belief that time isn’t the key factor in blogging, it is important, but it isn’t the issue we should focus on. Offering something to the debate should be the focus.
This isn’t an excuse for those that like to post every few months to say that they are using their time to think - we know that isn’t the case, and it isn’t supposed to be a mantra that every post should be an epic, short posts are very useful and relevant, it’s just confirmation that slowing down and adding value is something that will be appreciated by your subscribers and wider community.
Tags: Blogging, consultancy, slow blog, slow blog manifesto, Social media
November 30th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Excellent points, Lloyd. When I went to blogging nearly weekly (from daily a couple of years ago), I didn’t lose many readers who were catching me via the RSS feed. I simply felt I could not blog with the same quality regularly; plus I often blogged about branding principles, and these things do not change much over time. There was no need to revise theory. If readers wanted quantity over quality, they could always go to another blog where I was putting the everyday junk; but the main blog that bears my name would only have the thought-out, deeper posts. Slow blogging has worked for me.
Jack Yans last blog post..TV news gets on high horse about the evil internet again