There are hundreds of articles on the web on blogging. Many today concentrate on monetization and google gaming with far fewer talking about the actual content.
A particular post that showed up on my radar awhile back was by Dave Pollard on salon.com. The title, strangely enough, is How to Save the World. In the article two thing stand out.
First, this statement:
What is valued is information to which value (meaning, suggested action) has been added through visualization, synthesis and analysis
Followed by:
My review of the hits on my pages suggests that 95% of the page-reads on my blog are articles less than a week old, and that almost no one clicks the links to my older posts
...
if you think anyone, even your most faithful reader, cares about what you wrote more than a week ago, think again
I have to admit my first response was, "huh?"
Over eighty percent of my blog traffic is coming from Google referrals; with numbers rising over time. I certainly translate that to value being derived from content. The question in my mind was: If no one is interested in your old content, did you really provide value?
I gnawed on that awhile and realized it comes down to your audience. I blog primarily for two audiences: myself and others. By others, i mean this: if i can't find something thru search and figure it out myself, i will try to blog it.
Pollard's audience appears to be his readers. And despite my initial judgement, that is a "Good Thing." :-) A decent analogy would be a reference book of sorts versus a daily column; both provide value, just in different ways.
I realize i actually have readers too. In 2008, i'm gonna make an effort to create some content worthy of their time too.
The upside is that, unlike Pollard's blog, i feel like this blog has a legacy of sorts (well, certainly longer than a week :-). There is content here that folks find useful long after its creation. Does a blog need a legacy of search referrals? I don't think so.
One thing is abundantly clear from analysis of the two blogging models: absolutely no one is just browsing content.
Aside: To date, my top content is still the AC adapter for the Graco and Fisher Price baby swings. I've gotten emails from moms and dads as far away as Israel who are sick of buying batteries.
