Well, here is my take on this topic, as a non-blogger(iow, consumer of sorts). Please excuse this not-that-well-written rant in advance.
What do people - in my opinion - search for:
#1 Help & advice on a specific topic (like, how to disassemble a vw golf 1.3 '87 petrol engine)
#2 Specific information (list of vw engines)
#9 Opinions (compatible with their views / controversial, ideally from people they like or hate, but most importantly, already know >> my-favorite-auto-blog : why vw golf I was the best golf ever manufactured || that-fiat-loving-morron : why vw golf I should be banned from the streets)
#999 Random opinions from people they never heard of (some-guy-on-the-internet : 10 best things about the vw golf I generation || some-other-random-guy : 10 most beutiful wordpress themes of 2017)
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When you start your blog, you are that random person. I red many great, well researched, well written articles but honestly, I have no idea where I found them nor by whom they were written. Two reasons why:
a) Subscribing to someone I don't know is a risk I'm unwilling to take. I hate spam as much as averyone else. I don't know what you'll do with my email address. I don't want to get notifications about your new cat. I don't want to participate in any of your surveys and I don't want to help you make your blog better. Sorry, a day has only 24h, every minute wasted is a minute of your life you _won't_ get back.
b) I have no easy way to find out if your blog is any good in the first place.
The problem with blogs as a format(incl. video blogs) is that you effectively surrended all the contextual synapses your information is generating - to a search engine. Context has sometimes more value than the actual information. If I red your well-written article about linux kernel hardening, I _do_ want to know your opinion about different security subsystems for example. But what does your blog provide to make this task easier - a calendar? That primitive, useless junk called a "tag cloud"? A href link to an "older" post? Most of you don't even include a list of the most popular or recent articles. You want us - consumers - in this day an age, to actually click through some calendars on your blog an spend - no, waste - our valuable time to search for contextualy related topics? Who else is better at deciding about the context of your information than you - the bloke who is writing it? Can't you be a little more creative and write a system that would actually present all the information you have published since 1985 in a natural, contextual way?
People produce valuable content daily, but they somehow forgot to care about the context. If your blog is unable to set your article into a braoder body of knowledge and relies solely on a search engine/social media, well, then you get what you ordered. Good luck paying for all kinds of trickery to get your page visits.
As silly as it may sound, my problem might be due to writing about my own interests. I'm not offering help or advice, I wouldn't even say I'm offering specific info (since what I do is more exploratory), and I generally leave opinions out of it.
If I had to explain it, I'm like a somewhat randomized, editorialized Wikipedia for a specific topic. I want readers to click around as if on Wikipedia, so they can gather a wide-ranging, hopefully in-depth view of the topic (in this case, a major city and its cultural/historical context).
First, OT, I'm unable to edit my comment so sorry for the typos, my spell-checker was apparently on holiday. Now, to address your reply, people _are_ opinion-forming beings, its our human nature. We do have opinions even if we try to convince our-selves we don't. Writing a blog without exposing your opinion just so you won't offend anyone is an intellectual humanity-denying crime. Its a form of self-castration in my eyes. If you insist on writing dry, soul-less pieces of wikipedia-like information, maybe blogging is not the right format for you. Opinions are the "sauce" of an article. We are all humans, no-one remembers that colleague who never had an argument about anything, but you do remember that one ahole who always meant trouble, his opinions and world views. You may even miss that ahole once in a while ("yeah, I'm sure would have said something to that manager")
Well, no reason to take my comment personally, I don't know your work. I was merely taking advantage of your reply to take a punch at the current wave of political correctness and a special form of auto-censorship disguised as politeness, that's crawling into the blogosphere like a drunken monkey into a liquor factory.. + this sub-thread is OT anyway
What do people - in my opinion - search for:
#1 Help & advice on a specific topic (like, how to disassemble a vw golf 1.3 '87 petrol engine)
#2 Specific information (list of vw engines)
#9 Opinions (compatible with their views / controversial, ideally from people they like or hate, but most importantly, already know >> my-favorite-auto-blog : why vw golf I was the best golf ever manufactured || that-fiat-loving-morron : why vw golf I should be banned from the streets)
#999 Random opinions from people they never heard of (some-guy-on-the-internet : 10 best things about the vw golf I generation || some-other-random-guy : 10 most beutiful wordpress themes of 2017)
--
When you start your blog, you are that random person. I red many great, well researched, well written articles but honestly, I have no idea where I found them nor by whom they were written. Two reasons why:
a) Subscribing to someone I don't know is a risk I'm unwilling to take. I hate spam as much as averyone else. I don't know what you'll do with my email address. I don't want to get notifications about your new cat. I don't want to participate in any of your surveys and I don't want to help you make your blog better. Sorry, a day has only 24h, every minute wasted is a minute of your life you _won't_ get back.
b) I have no easy way to find out if your blog is any good in the first place.
The problem with blogs as a format(incl. video blogs) is that you effectively surrended all the contextual synapses your information is generating - to a search engine. Context has sometimes more value than the actual information. If I red your well-written article about linux kernel hardening, I _do_ want to know your opinion about different security subsystems for example. But what does your blog provide to make this task easier - a calendar? That primitive, useless junk called a "tag cloud"? A href link to an "older" post? Most of you don't even include a list of the most popular or recent articles. You want us - consumers - in this day an age, to actually click through some calendars on your blog an spend - no, waste - our valuable time to search for contextualy related topics? Who else is better at deciding about the context of your information than you - the bloke who is writing it? Can't you be a little more creative and write a system that would actually present all the information you have published since 1985 in a natural, contextual way?
People produce valuable content daily, but they somehow forgot to care about the context. If your blog is unable to set your article into a braoder body of knowledge and relies solely on a search engine/social media, well, then you get what you ordered. Good luck paying for all kinds of trickery to get your page visits.