Today's Tip: Brevity is the soul of wit. Yeah I stole that one from Shakespeare but it is one of those things that bloggers either understand or don't understand. Brevity is also the way to hold the attention span of the billions of people who have Google at their disposal. Doubt Shakespeare ever thought that would be something to consider. The fact of the matter is almost all long blogs are boring. I've managed to convince myself in the past that what I had to say was so important that the average person would endure seven, eight even nine long winded paragraphs of my brilliance. It ended up being more like fly repellant than one of those long dangly fly strips you see in the barn. Now you will probably notice that most of my "Thought" and "Tip" blogs are a couple of long winded paragraphs each, and my "Write Up" blogs are usually four long winded paragraphs, five in a pinch.
Like all of you I had to go out and experience these things for myself. Losing most of your readers will be the first clue, but another one is that (as I always say) you have to read other blogs. You will never get it if you simply talk to yourself and ignore everyone else. I have seen long blogs that were really great, but they interfered with my life a little. You really only get that type of shot with the average reader once, maybe twice if you are really good. Of course we are all really good and all, but as I said above that means you only get one or two bites at that apple.
No comments:
Post a Comment