WHAT THE BLOGOSPHERE NEEDS MORE OF (UPDATE)

Posted on October 14, 2003 by Dave Pollard

salon curve
Several months ago I published a list of What the Blogosphere Needs More Of. It was one of my most commented-on posts, and I promised to update the list based on readers’ suggestions and additional ideas, and permanently post it on my sidebar. I’m putting it on the right sidebar, since there is more room there. I hope it will be useful to those stuck for something to write about, or wondering why some posts, and some blogs, are vastly more popular than others. Please note that this is a list of content that bloggers want to see more of. If you want to see a list of what blogging tools are most sought-after, that’s here.

Blog readers want to see more:
  1. original research, surveys etc.
  2. original, well-crafted fiction
  3. great finds: resources, blogs, essays, artistic works
  4. news not found anywhere else
  5. category killers: aggregators that capture the best of many blogs/feeds, so they need not be read individually
  6. clever, concise political opinion (most readers prefer these consistent with their own views)
  7. benchmarks, quantitative analysis
  8. personal stories, experiences, lessons learned
  9. first-hand accounts
  10. live reports from events
  11. insight: leading-edge thinking & novel perspectives
  12. short educational pieces
  13. relevant “aha” graphics
  14. great photos
  15. useful tools and checklists
  16. prÈcis, summaries, reviews and other time-savers
  17. fun stuff: quizzes, self-evaluations, other interactive content

Blog writers want to see more:
  1. constructive criticism, reaction, feedback
  2. ‘thank you’ comments, and why readers liked their post
  3. requests for future posts on specific subjects
  4. foundation articles: posts that writers can build on, on their own blogs
  5. reading lists/aggregations of material on specific, leading-edge subjects that writers can use as resource material
  6. wonderful examples of writing of a particular genre, that they can learn from
  7. comments that engender lively discussion
  8. guidance on how to write in the strange world of weblogs

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6 Responses to WHAT THE BLOGOSPHERE NEEDS MORE OF (UPDATE)

  1. Indigo Ocean says:
    October 15, 2003 at 15:36

    Thanks for this Dave. Is it okay if I take the opportunity to plug for a blog I participate in that is a category aggregator? It’s http://www.inspiranote.com and offers a compendium of inspirational poems, images, short stories, good news, book and movie reviews, and short personal growth essays. We publish about daily on weekdays, but as a new blog have a small readership. Perhaps Inspiranote is something blog readers are looking for.As for what our writers are looking for, definitely more comments. What feedback we get is very positive and there is a high page turning rate on the blog, but so few comments are left that if you visit now you probably won’t see any on the front page. We average about two comments per month! So yes, as writers it really means a lot when people say what they appreciated about an entry, or what it triggered in them, SOMETHING.

  2. Yan says:
    October 16, 2003 at 17:40

    Hmm. this has got me thinking…I wish bloggers made more categories on their blogs as I find I am often only interested in one kind of writing on people’s blogs.Sometimes I am most interested in someones personal life, other people I like thier politics, other times it’s a specific thing, and often it’s impossible to wade through all the posts to find them all. I think if people sat down and looked at thier posts, they would start finding themes to them, and if a particular theme keeps popping up, it’s probably something worth writing more about anyway because it a) Helps them build on ideas, b) makes people return to thier blog. I definately find that people often get attached to a certain series and will go through and read the whole category over a day period. So sometimes it’s even worth writing more than people can read (if you have time) because if a reader is really interested in the topic they will read backwards. And later certain people will specifically search into that part of the blog. I do notice strange configurations of search items that repeat, which means it’s the same person coming back, and using the same search word they go there the first time. For example today I got “Burning Man Duck” which is the third time in two weeks this person has come back to my blog. I think with some practice all bloggers can train thier eye to see who are returning users and who are random and it’s worth taking note. Also if they have high search items for specific terms it’s probably a good idea to write more about that subject if they are indeed looking for higher numbers of readers. If they are just looking to vent and play, that’s a different matter.On a different tangent, I find it extremely difficult to deal with the very long lists of blogs that most people have on the side (Is that what they call a Blog Roll?) I find it overwhelming. Usability testings (old career path given up due to boredom and dotcom crash)repeatedlyshows that users get lost if presented with long list of links without descriptions and blank them out. I would say there is probably Link Blindness very similar to banner blindness being developed.I know this is part of the “I like you so lets link to each other” mentality of a community, but I do wish people only place blogs they seriously read at a regular basis or find extremely useful. It would help me discover ones I have not seen before. Otherwise it’s just too many to contend with.I know I have minimum links on my blog, in fact far less than I read, (I do wonder if people construe it to be rude), but I try to put the links of my favorite and lesser known blogs on because it garentees someone will actually go there. Otherwise users will just go straight to the one they already know when looking for the next click. I think links should be like a good review and I really did apreciate people writing a little blurb for Glutter when I first started, directing people specifically to my site. And I like to do the same for other new blogs. It’s really important to get direct encouragement in the first month I think. After that it picks up it’s own momentum anyway.I could go on as you probably know, if you ever read my long posts… but I think that’s enough for anyone for now. And I do want to say, thank god for spell check or my blog will be as badly spelt as this is… which will make no one want to read it. Yan

  3. Justin Hitt says:
    October 19, 2003 at 14:45

    Dave,Where this wants listed in order of most important first?Sincerely,Justin

  4. Dave Pollard says:
    October 19, 2003 at 15:15

    Yan: The issue of categories is tricky. I have quite a few people that subscribe only to my ‘business’ posts, and a few that subscribe only to my metablogging posts, but most readers tell me that they like the serendipity of my topics and would find my blog less valuable if I broke it up into separate category blogs, or focused my frenetic mind on one subject and blogged more deeply and specifically on that subject alone. In KM, one of the things we study is taxonomy, and most businesses impose a taxonomy on all users of their content architecture. I find that very limiting, almost self-defeating, because it forces you to try to adjust your mental model of subject-matter to that of the taxonomist, which is unintuitive and sometimes infuriating. Just as people lay out their desktop, their filing cabinet, and their Windows ‘My Documents’ folder in unique and very personal ways, I think it is important to allow bloggers to use (or not use) categories in a way that makes sense to them as writers. You will see new Social Software in the near future that will allow you to identify blogs and blog-posts on subjects that interest you, no matter how they are organized. Such social software will be critical to the evolution of blogs from something only 2% of the population knows about, to a ubiquitous means of personal information content sharing and management.As for blogrolls, you are right that the longer it is, the less valuable it is to others. I’ve tried to deal with this by breaking my blogroll (all of which I read at least twice a week) into categories, which are sometime oversimplified but at least a bit less overwhelming than one huge list. Those bloggers who include a short description of each blog on their blogroll are providing a great service, but it’s a lot of work and can make a blogroll immensely long. I think Social Software will fix this, too, providing us in the near future with automatic short descriptions of blogs we read, what we’ve read on them recently, and how frequently we’ve accessed them, all of which will help us hone in the blogs and blog posts we would most likely value.Justin: No, it’s not in any particular order. Different people want different things from a blog, so any ‘ranking’ of these items would, I think, inevitably be biased.

  5. Sue Richards says:
    June 22, 2005 at 19:29

    Getting people to comment seems to be the big challenge. People tell me that they like my blog to my face. And they email me. But hardly anyone leaves a comment. Any thoughts to share on that?Calendar Girl

  6. Nancy Barness says:
    June 23, 2008 at 19:57

    oqZUTj Blogs rating, add your blog to be rated for free:http://blogsrate.net

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