Monday, July 28, 2008

Five Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Blog About Blogging (Not!)

The recent wave of popularity of making sure you write blog posts about something where you can put a number in your headline is starting to grate on me as much as “What do you think?” closings aimed at generating comments. From “Eight Ways to Tie Your Shoes Left-Handed” to “Six Things to Consider Before You Recycle” sticking a number in the headline is all the rage.

I don’t really have five reasons why you shouldn’t blog about blogging. I don’t even have fourteen reasons why you shouldn’t include a number in your headline. Obviously people are using it because it works in terms of getting people to click. But then again, so does “Miley Cyrcus Naked”. Just because something works doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea.

If it’s your passion to create “list” style posts that are helpful for people,the whole “5 Ways To Headline Your Blog Posts” approach seems just fine. But if it isn’t, it sure seems like deliberately coming up with content where you can use a number in your headlines will get old to both you, and your readers very quickly.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I definitely agree with your assessment of the list post. the problem is that a lot of writers are using a useful technique for evil. A lot of these list posts actually have minimal content beyond the bullet points.

I, personally, hate walls of text. I like to read and write list posts because it breaks up the flow and helps to get ideas across easily.

Although many bloggers/writers don't want to admit it, they are just not skilled enough to write actual paragraphs of content that would hold anyone's attention.

Robert Seidman said...

Rahsheen, those are great points. The world seems to have moved to a place where "walls of text" are out and simple to read lists of things are in. Especially as people expand the amount of things they read, it makes a lot of sense.

I worry that even those with the talent for it (say the likes of Kara Swisher) may still get impacted simply because attention spans are shorter and 1,000 words of text can look daunting.

Anonymous said...

Bravo.

Nothing annoys me more than the "5 ways", except the call to action, "what do you think"?

Why not just write something thought provoking enough to get me to tell you anyway.

So many blogs are becoming like that annoying passenger on a long haul flight.