Comments on: On Schedules, Focus and Professionalism

By: Darren Torpey

Darren Torpey — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:00:39 +0000

I’ve often questioned the wisdom of that kind of conventional advice because it always contradicts everything about how I read blogs. You said it best: RSS makes frequency almost completely irrelevant, and the same goes for focus as well. I care very little what the topic of an individual post is (and whether it fits well categorically with the others from that blog) because the nature of how I’m choosing whether to read the post makes it easy to skip a post.

Think about it: Many, many people read sites like RubyInside (the theme of which is as vague as “Ruby programming language stuff”). The topic of posts vary from specific techniques to discussions about the Ruby community itself. I imagine that any given reader’s interest in a given article will vary *greatly*, and yet that is expected, and the format of the site itself makes it easy to just look past an article that doesn’t interest you much. I’d argue that RSS readers do the same for just about any blog.

And besides, I really do think you need to just write what you care about, whenever you feel most motivated to do so. (My own trouble is mostly to do with beating the de-motivators)

I really do think that people need to stop acting like blogging as an activity means a specific type of behavior from the author and a specific set of expectations about building readership, etc. Blogs aren’t just about what’s new or being “the place everyone goes to read every day”; they’re about expression, sharing, and community. And each blogger does their best when they blog what they’re best at, however they can. So just keep doing it your way, man.

By: bill

bill — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 04:57:11 +0000

Jeff, I think for your blog, post when you feel the muse. Post on what you want to post. it is your blog. I’d be upset to lose your insight if you stopped posting on programming to begin an in-depth multipart series on flower arranging, but why should you care? it’s your blog. Maybe knowing that you like flower arranging would spur some of us to give it a try. I think it is a game waiting to be developed for the Wii, personally.

By: Meta

Meta — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:22:34 +0000

I think you are right on with the RSS feeds - I have removed a few people because they actually just post to often with too little content in each post. But, that is just me - can’t really generalize that.

And posting on-topic? Ya, you should probably be approximately in the same ballpark most of the time but I think that would come naturally if you are posting about things you actually care about.

I have read a few of those ‘rules to blogging’ things and always just thought: “Sure, if you are trying to make blogging your job (for cash, sub-numbers and/or amazon gifts) and you are posting about things you don’t particularly care about but you think people will read - then those make sense”. But if your blog is primarily for you and secondary for your readers. And you post about the things you care about. It will generally be on-track and the people that want to read it, will.

My 2c anyways.

By: BBrathwaite

BBrathwaite — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:14:46 +0000

You make a really good point about RSS feeds, actually. My experience is the same as yours. Netvibes just collects everything for me until I can read it.