Article Styled Blogs Are Boring
Article=Long
Blog Post=Short
I’ve come across one too many blog that are written similar to articles. Article style writing in posts are long and usually lose my already short attention span. I’m subscribed to quite a few blogs and like most blog readers speed read through the posts, usually because we are all subscribed to more than a few blog sites. Keeping that in mind, I heavily believe in keeping articles and blogs styles separate. There are the few exceptions, where the blog is actually a news site which is a more acceptable arena to place a longer article. But I think the majority would agree that blog readers like short, sweet and to the point.
Some few rules I like to follow in postings are:
- Posts should be shorter than articles.
- Posts should follow a short, quick, knee-jerk reaction about the topic
- Posts can be written in a informal and personal manner, showing personality.
- Posts should be used as quick reminders to readers about what the author is about.
- Posts should show the author’s involvement in the industry itself.
If you have published articles, linking them into your blog is an excellent idea to leverage both avenues while establishing your credibility within the industry and still pleasing your readers. Just always remember that pleasing your readers will keep you afloat and make your blog successful.
I kinda write article based posts sometimes too, on various topics like our society, the church, sociological problems, culture etc, and at the same time write “blog posts” which are shorter, humorous etc. It seems to work out well for me :)
- Sandman
I agree – up to a point.
As my RSS feeds continue to mushroom, I certainly appreciate the punchier posts that the more prolific blogs serve up (Engadget is a good example). However, longer article-style postings do have a place – when quality is high, and their message cannot be delivered effectively in a few sound bites. The Secret Diary of Steve Blogs, for example, delivers a mixture of styles- and never fails to hold my interest.
I’m sorry Susan but I disagree. I posted a response on my site. (With a link back, of course.) Fortunately for us you don’t usually follow your own advice.;-)
I agree almost completely. Every once in a while you run across an awesome writer who can get away with something longer.
I fully agree with your responses. There are a few blogs that are able to maintain quality with long blog postings (problogger does it well). When I speak of long article styled postings, I speak of blog postings that contain 4000+ words in one posting. There are the lucky few that like Stoddart pointed out that can be riveting but there aren’t many that can succeed in doing just that. Many newspaper journalist follow the inverted pyramid because people do have short attention spans. Daily Writing Tips explains it well: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/the-inverted-pyramid/
I usually write article style and also feel they can be made interesting too. They on an average run around 500+ words. Cos mostly I am describing some leisure activity like fishing in http://www.thepizzazzy.com/liesure-corner
Grrrrr…seems my first post is an article!
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Although it’s all about personal preference successful bloggers usually write long and well thought out articles usually once a week, depending on the niche you write at etc check out the article http://www.viperchill.com/blog-post-length/