Killer Content Is Not Possible Every Single Post
Jul. 31st, 2009 by Danny BrownEvery Sunday evening from 8.00pm CST, #blogchat takes place on Twitter.
Hosted by the uber-smart Mack Collier, it’s a discussion by bloggers about blogging – tips, tricks, tools of the trade, best practices and more.
It’s quickly evolved into one of the must-attend chat events on Twitter, and I never fail to come away with some cool new tidbits of information every week.
Last night, an interesting side discussion popped up around the quality of blog posts. It stemmed from a tweet by George F. Snell III, who said that the most important part of a blog post was the headline. Scott Stratten’s view was that the headline didn’t matter if the content sucked, while my take was that a killer headline can help guide the post itself.
This then led to the question of the post itself. I mentioned that it’s not always possible to post killer content every single post, as much as we try to as bloggers looking after our readers. Scott mentioned that if the reader learns, then isn’t that killer? I responded yes, which means that in that respect even mediocre can be killer.
This turned into a great follow-up discussion about whether you should post at all if your writing is just mediocre, with Scott suggesting that instead of regular posts, only publish when and if you’re going to knock it out the park every time. Unfortunately at this stage I couldn’t reply as my Twitter usage had been used up, seemingly.
I don’t disagree with Scott that mediocre posts shouldn’t be published (it’s why I have about 15 posts in draft mode, waiting on some tinkering with content). Where I do differ is that it’s down to interpretation.
As a blogger, I go out of my way to make sure that whatever I publish has both relevance and information that will help my readers. I’m pretty sure every single blogger out there is the same. Yet the relevance and “brilliance”, if you like, is down to the reader.
Say I write what I think is a killer post about social media monitoring tools.
To some readers, it could be the greatest thing since sliced bread. To others, it could be, “Meh, I know this, this post has no value to me. Next.” To that person, the post is mediocre because of the information (or lack of) inside the post. Yet to the reader who never knew this information, the post may be killer because it’s opened their eyes to something they never knew.
As I mentioned to both Scott and George, no-one sets out to deliberately write a mediocre post – but sometimes some posts will always be better than others, that’s just natural. The point is to be happy that what you wrote doesn’t short-change you or your readers. Unless you have that confidence, don’t publish.
Does that work?
About The Author
Danny Brown is the owner of Press Release PR, a boutique agency specializing in search engine optimized press releases and social media PR. He offers consultancy advice on social media and PR to both individuals and corporations He has guest authored at leading web and search marketing site Web Analytics World and is a blog partner of the WebProNews and iEntry business networks. He is also a regular contributor to the Dad-o-Matic project.Posted in: Technology, The Net |
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August 1st, 2009 at 1:05 pm
The title is all-important. You can get away by skimping on the content, as long as your keywords / keyphrases are repeated twice in the 1st 100 words, and in the last sentence.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:34 pm
There are pros and cons to everything, I am not sure if I entirely agree with waiting for the post to be perfect, from my perspective…. I guess it depends on you’re current exposure, you’re audience, and how much of an influence you have on that audience. Because if you have a high influence, and you’re viewers perceive your blog to be a high quality content blog and you are an authority in your industry then yeah the pressure is there to hit that home run every time. But otherwise I always say just hit the post button when you think the post is decent, but keeping it consistent is key in the end.
Till then,
Jean
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:48 am
I agree that the title is all-important. You can get away by skimping on the content, as long as your keywords / keyphrases are repeated twice in the 1st 100 words, and in the last sentence.
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Adding killer content to my blog can you think of anything else ?
September 5th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
title also matter besides content.. but don’t forget themes layout also matter !
November 1st, 2009 at 3:39 am
@itsoke, I would rather have great content, over a great theme any day of the week! In fact.. I know there are quite a few websites that are very successful who do not have great web themes to it.
Till then,
Jean
November 11th, 2009 at 4:34 am
I agree, the title is very important. Also you must express a clear content and follow the rules of keywords.
A good article should hold the reader’s attention.