Jakob Nielsen says to write articles, not blog postings. Good, forward-thinking advice Jakob! I’ll start doing that, and recommending that others do the same, a year-and-a-half ago.
John Place tells you how to disagree and persuade without offending. Good advice for dealing with critical comments.
Questions about dating, relationships, love and sex, or just want to see how to use blogging and online video in one of the most lucrative niches around? Check out Dan and Jennifer.
The Three Little Blogs: A Cautionary Tale – Nice story telling, thanks for not making me one of the pigs… err, blogs.
Can you draw a better Googlebot than Rand Fiskin? Enter this contest and win some absolutely fabulous prizes. OK, win a prize… let’s not oversell it.
Did you know that Perfomancing Metrics blog statistics is back? They have both a free and low cost paid service. Check it out.
Any other interesting links I’ve missed? Drop them in the comments.
Reader Comments (14)
Jakob provides good advice but he has to realize that creative minds will be using blogs in ways we would never have imagined. To say they shouldn’t be used for corporations is a mistake in my mind. Companies need to explore new things always. Jakob needs to open his eyes a little wider and immerse himself in it if he hasn’t yet. Maybe he needs to create a “to blog or not to blog” blog?!
Hey Brian,
Thanks for the shout out!
To the point about online video, we’re going out to L.A. tomorrow for our first national cable TV appearance – directly resulting from our online videos.
Also had our first talk radio appearance this past week on a very popular show syndicated across Canada, and just did an interview with a major California paper for a Sunday feature story that ended up being syndicated across dozens of other papers across the country.
Good times! 🙂
Online video professionally done (with some TLC anyway), combined with a solid blog (regular and compelling content), is golden these days.
Have an awesome day!
Dan & Jennifer
Performancing Metrics is an outstanding service- I highly recommend them. I wrote a recent article that compares them to other services that might be helpful.
Thanks for the mention! In the interest of keeping the entry succinct, the fourth little blog was edited out. So you were spared.
Hey Brian,
It’s good to know that your doing your bit in
promoting other blogs.
Write articles not blog posts, I like that! I also like the article by John Place. If only people took such a constructive approach to conversation on the internet!
“The Three Little Blogs: A Cautionary Tale” is a great story. I like it very much!
Let me be selfish for a while and present one of my articles – 7 Steps to Turn On Your Guiding Light.
I hope you will like it!
No blog could exists (for a long time) without a guiding light and a purpose (mission). If you have found yours – you lucky you. If you are not – start searching! :))
Regards,
William
I still don’t really agree with the Jakob Nielsen article. Yes, writing strong articles and good cornerstone copy is a great idea, but shorter “postings” can be just as useful sometimes.
A good blog (or any content website) needs strong articles, but depending on the content and subject matter, a shorter post can be much more effective. Like your last post for example.
My favorite from the above would be “The Three Little Blogs: A Cautionary Tale”. In part because I love it when someone plays with content or form and partly because I actually played with idea of writing my post about what you can learn about blogging from reading fairytales based on The Three Little Pigs just like that.
Instead I chose to summarize the original and then write about what you could learn from it and how you could interpret it. Not as much fun to read as this one I am sure, but perhaps (even) more enlightening? You find my story (published 6 days previously to this one) by clicking my name. Should you be so inclined.
I would absolutely love to hear what you think about it, how you value the differences and which you think will teach you the most…
Good to promoting other blogs
Write an article when you have enough material for an article AND the material is not time-sensitive. Write a blog post for things that will not matter next month. I’m working on a long series that is intended to become an e-book … but it is non-fiction rooted in history … only the final chapter or two will be current material. The first few chapters will be released as articles; the rest in e-book form. But, if I were writing about the most recent antics of Detroit politics, I’d keep it down to a blog post of just a few hundred words — chopping an ‘article’ up if I needed to in order to keep the length down. Current events are inherently time-sensitive.
I’ve read and generally admired Jakob Nielson since the early days of the web. But he cannot be the authority on everything at once.
I am a big fan of the logic and testing mentality behind Jacob Neilson’s work.
So much so that I have adopted that mantra, so I still read Jacob’s investigative pieces, but impliment little bits at a time to allow me to test changes.
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