What makes a great blog? (Response posting)
October 30th, 2005Jason asks an interesting question. It’s a question that I, too, have wondered about from time to time. What counts as success in the blogging, or more specifically, in the personal blogging world? Sure, the political blogs want to be counted amongst the pundits, or cited as sources in some mainstream media outlet. The technological blogs want to influence you as a consumer. But the personal blogs, the ones without a real topic, the online journals, if you will, where is the measure of success for them? I read an article, back in September, that talked about the results of a survey of bloggers. (HRMPH! No one asked ME.) I guess the working theory is that people who blog do so because they want to be political pundits or wish they had pursued a career in journalism, but the reality is that most people (about a third) blog as a form of therapy, of sorts. They do it to get those thoughts out. They do it as a journal.
This, to me, leaves the question, Why do we then, post our personal thoughts in such a public forum as the internet? This question is somewhat answered within that article linked above:
"In a way, blogs serve as oral history," Bill Schreiner, vice president of AOL Community, said in a statement. "When it comes to sharing blogs and reading other people’s blogs, we like to connect with people, learn about their lives, and find common ground. There’s no pressure to write about a particular subject or keep blogs maintained a certain way, and it’s not necessarily a popularity contest."
But I disagree with this assessment to a point. I think there is a measure of the popularity contest. I think that we all want to be needed or loved or wanted. (*surreptitious look at the current poll on the sidebar*) That’s what Google, and more specifically, the Page-Rank system has done to us. We all Google ourselves from time to time, and it’s either an ego boost or it dashes our hopes (or maybe leaves us relieved if we’re looking for a measure of anonymity).
Jason asks:
But how do you determine what makes good content? Does the writing have to be good or just the topic? The blogs which seem to get the most traffic tend to be somewhat on the controversial side. What if I don’t want to stir up controversy? How can I get people to read what I write? Should I even care? I’m not trying to do this to make money, so does it really matter whether anyone is reading?
I think that the success of blogs is not necessarily determined at all by whether or not you have good content or a decent style. I don’t think it necessarily matters what, if anything, your topic is, but rather, who you know. I think that the more people you know, the more traffic you’ll have. The more people you know who *also* blog, the more links will exist to your blog. For example, Jason, I found your blog one day after reading a comment you made in Al’s Words. I clicked the link when you said "I have a new blog, check it out." and I read it for days before you prompted me to finally reply. I left a link, which is not something I normally do… well, I’m picky about it at the very least, and the next thing I knew, you had a link to my blog on yours. I almost immediately returned the courtesy. That’s just how things tend to work in the blogosphere. One hand washes the other. (Just a random interjection here. I had originally written "blogsphere" because, to me, it sounds better and the Google Toolbar’s spellchecker which does not recognize such words as "blogging" or "bloggers" changed it to "blogosphere. I found that rather odd and worth noting.) The blogs I see that seem to get the most traffic are the blogs of teens. They don’t necessarily have much to say, or at least not much of social or political import… I’m sure it’s important to them, though, I remember being a teenager. They discuss the latest gossip and the homework they put off until the last minute. They speak in code (I guess it’s a sign that I’m getting old that I keep thinking some of these are in foreign languages, but they’re not, they’re in CODE!) and they tag each others boards with silly little comments that we, of Generations X and Y, would have had to call to say… or page to each other. LOL. I also think there’s something to memes. I’ve become fascinated with the concept of memes lately. I’m not interested in playing those games, but it’s given me a great research project. The memes that I link to above are not what are commonly known as memes within the blog community. Essentially, they are shared topics for those without the ideas to create new content. IMO, little more than a cop-out, closely related to the chain mail that plagues our inboxes. "Let’s play a game… tell me your fondest dream, your favorite color and your very first pet’s name and I’ll… " well, it’s ME we’re talking about here. I’ll delete it and tell you to kiss my ass. (Well, I probably won’t tell you that, but that’s what I’ll be thinking.) Back on topic. What makes a good blog, or even a great blog, is the person who’s writing it. It’s not about the people who read it, at least it shouldn’t be. If it becomes that, at least actively, then I truly believe that you’ve failed. I think you can wonder and question it, but more than anything, aren’t you questioning yourself and your motivations for doing it? I don’t know that there’s any more success to a blog than there is to a journal. If you fill every page of a blank book with secret thoughts and hopes and dreams, are you then successful? With a blog, there is no end to the pages… it goes on forever, so that measure of success doesn’t work. Writing every day, at least for people who have other things isn’t realistic. I mean, it can be, and it can work, but everyone gets caught up in real life. If you skip a day (or two or three or seventeen) does that mean you’ve failed? Can you measure success without an equal standard of failure? If not, then I think that most blogs that are written to some regular extent are ALL successful. Because I don’t believe that failure exists in blogging, unless you get sued for it. Yeah, I think you have to have clear motivations and an equal idea of failure to gauge the success of a blog. If you don’t have both of those, then any measure of success that you try to apply simply will not fit. Is it not enough to know that people care enough about YOU to want to know what you think or what you feel? I ask myself that question on a regular basis, my dears. Usually it is. ~FG };^>
