The other day, Gene asked for thoughts on why we’ve seen a decrease in blog activity over the past year. I’ve been thinking a lot about this as it applies to A Case Of The Mundys, so I thought I’d share my thoughts here:
Blogging well requires relationship. It requires regular attention not only to your blog, but to the blogs of your readers, and your potential readers. For me, I know that this attention would be better spent on the family and friends who are physically near me. I have a hard enough time being a good friend. I’ve tried to spend 2009 building less into web relationship and more into the people I actually spend time with. The caveat, of course, is that some of the people I spend time with are friends that I made through blogging or Twitter. I don’t discount the friends I’ve made in the blogging community, I simply feel a greater responsibility to those who are with me each day.
Blogging well requires time. When I first started blogging I worked for a company with a pretty lax internet policy and lots of down time. Finding interesting YouTube videos and writing witty bits of sarcasm could take up a couple of hours and it was no big deal. Things aren’t like that anymore. I’m working two busy jobs and when I come home I should probably spend time talking to my wife rather than typing on a laptop.
Blogging well requires content. Average Joe (aka, me) doesn’t really have much to say. Truth is, there is only a small circle of people who would care to read a long discourse on the role of worship in the Exodus (yeah, that’s a two-month old draft) and everything else I write about (food, my dog, snarky comments) fits perfectly into 140 characters on Twitter and Facebook. Without meaningful content, blogging is somewhat… meaningless.
What that means for blogging in 2010. I’m not putting down blogging as a medium. I still think it’s great. I still read lots of ‘em. I’m still going to write on this one. I just think it’s changing. The blogs that are holding on and thriving are those that have a purpose. Generally, that purpose is to promote something– a person, an idea, an album, something. The time and energy that goes into a good blog needs to have a payoff beyond, “oh! I had 31 views today!” It needs to translate into mp3s sold, ideas accepted, seats filled, or some other goal.
That’s my opinion. Thoughts?
1
Sep 09
< 1000
So, I randomly went to delete some spam today and noticed that I currently have 999 comments on this here blog. That blows my mind.
So, I just wanted to thank you all for reading and joining the conversation. Hopefully I’ll have a few comment-worthy posts in the next couple of weeks.
Oh, and 1000th comment gets something cool.