Allan & Steve are the chubby founders of LessEverything. This is their blog, hear them rant, praise, give advice and talk about Just Stuff, Less Accounting, Lovd by Less, More Honey, Less Memories, Code, Business, Design, Marketing
September 24th, 2008
Reasons People Don't Actually Read Your Blog, part ii
written by Steven Bristol
In response to our post about why people might not be reading your blog, Eugen Minciu wrote his thoughts.
My thoughts about Eugen’s thoughts about Allan’s thoughts:
I am afraid that he missed the point entirely and also illustrated the problem. The real problem isn’t that posts are too long or readers are too dumb, the real problem is that posts aren’t interesting enough. I gladly look for forward to Cringely’s post every week. When it comes, I set aside 10 – 15 minutes to read it. I read every word and I don’t skim. Because it’s INTERESTING. If you have something to say and can say it well, then take as much type as you need. But have more respect for me and don’t waste my time with your self-indulgent blather. Use the fewest number of characters to make your well written point.
He makes a few comparisons that I’d like to address:
- College: One has a real reason to be there and it’s not entertainment.
- Books: No one expects a book to take five minutes. But getting to the end of a non-fiction book and wishing the author had just written a five minute blog post happens way too often.
- Films: The expectation is that they last longer than five minutes. I usually will sit past five minutes, but if it still sucks after 15, I bail. Same for documentaries.
- Newspapers are exactly what one should be striving for. Short (hopefully), well written posts about one subject that can be read quickly while still absorbing all the information. There is no expectation that everyone will read the whole newspaper; people just read the parts they are INTERESTED in.
Do you see the pattern here? It’s about respecting your reader’s time (and expectations) and giving them something of value that they will come back for. I’m sure Eugen tackled all these points by the end of his post, but the truth is it was too long and not interesting enough to keep me. I started skimming and then when I didn’t see anything except the same long winded point, I decided to stop reading. (That’s not true, I did skim all the way to the end, something I can no longer do with Steve Yegge posts.)
3 Responses to “Reasons People Don't Actually Read Your Blog, part ii”
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My point seems to have been missed as well. About the examples: reading a blog, like going to college, reading a book, watching a film or reading a newspaper is an intellectual activity. I do none of these for sheer entertainment.
I can think of no intellectual activity that really gets the gears going in less than 5 minutes. Even in less than 15 minutes. You don’t even get into flow in that short a time.
My point is that short posts are going to make your blog read by more people (I did say Allan was right) and that you’re encouraging a dangerous phenomenon in the process.
That being said, expect a fun rebuttal from me later on.
@Eugen,
I’m sorry it takes you more than five minutes to get your intellectual gears going (actually that explains a lot), the rest of us start up much faster. (For those of you that do not know, Eugen is a close friend and so I am only being mean to a friend, not a stranger, that makes it OK, right?).
You are again making my point. You don’t need to write a rebuttal blog post later, you’ve said it all right here. Do you really need more words?
Now please, just get back to work! ;)
steve
Newspaper stories are supposed to be written in such a way that they can be abandoned part-way and useful information has still been imparted. When reporters were reporters, at least.
Otherwise, agreed, I think – I started skimming about 1/3 of the way through.