[cynicism]
If you're new to blogging, you may still be fresh and innocent and think how wonderful it must be to have a venue for your random musings for all to read. If you've read any blogs other than those of yourself, your friends, and your neighbor's sweater-wearing chihuahua, you have likely found that approximately 70% of blogs maintained by actual people are self-described as 'random' or some essentially synonymous expression (see "stuff" in The Bitter Scroll's own subtitle). It's cute, in a wacky, slightly modern-rebellious kinda way. (Because, you know, not following the crowd is what everybody's doing these days.)
Unfortunately, what lacks in content will never be fully made up by form or medium of expression. The more readers who experience the wearing-off of the novelty of blogs, the more they will want some indication of content, some way to fit what you're likely to say into the vast hierarchy of knowledge and opinions. The more you leave it open, the more readers will fear pictures of pets or detailed descriptions of how you felt when you stubbed your toe yesterday.
The solution? Well, it depends if you think there's a problem, of course. If you really don't want to be heard--you just want to talk--blogging probably really is for you. (And easier on the rest of us. You can't click away from a RL conversation.) But if you want people to read your stuff, you need to give them a reason to read before they read. In the approximately 0.4 seconds in which they judge your blog worth it or not when they stumble across it, you need to convince people that your blog is worth reading. Then, of course, actually make worth reading.
I think we've got more than enough blue pills in the blogosphere. We could probably use a few more attempts to escape from the matrix of randomness and, ironically, uniformity.
[/cynicism]
4 comments:
One of the forums at the last Society of Biblical Literature meeting was on the biblioblog--the term that's evolved to refer to blogging by professional biblical scholars. One of the panelists suggested that what was really needed was not just personal blogs by scholars but scholarly blogs on very particular topics. His is a great example...the Philo of Alexandria Blog. I've created a blog specifically for study of, research on, and interpretation of the Early Medieval Gospels but have never gotten around to posting anything on it...
So--that's one thought about how blogs and blogging can actually contribute to academic culture instead of just being a pure ego vehicle.
Good point. I should mention that I do know there are good specific blogs like the Philo blog out there. I just laughed last night to find a whole bunch of blogs in a row that all really seemed to think they were unique and random. But there really are some awesome topical blogs out there. I think ultimately format will give way to content, in that the ego blogs simply won't do as well and keep any kind of readership. (Again, that's probably not even the goal of many blogs.)
I look forward to seeing interesting posts on your medieval Gospel blog... :-)
At one point, I tried to keep three different blogs (one for literature and languages, one for politics and one that was more "oh, the humanity!" than anything else) active to avoid posts on too many and too different subjects. I didn't have the energy to keep all three alive, but that's one way of keeping things separated.
You can write about whatever you like and still get readers as long as you do it really good -- but most people don't.
//JJ
Funny you mention that. I've toyed with the idea of having this blog for linguistic/Germanic stuff, and another for more creative / personality related stuff. Like poems I've written and stuff. I guess I still haven't fully decided, but I definitely want the overall function of this blog to be rather professional, informative, and academic, even if casual.
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