At the end of last year, I read Flat Earth News by Nick Davies and, although I have to confess I wasn’t a particular fan of mainstream media before I read it, any last shred of respect I had for newspapers and corporate media bodies was destroyed by the revelations in that book. So I read Adam Vincenzini’s reproduced blog post with interest this morning. I hadn’t come across Adam’s blog before, but he embarked on an experiment a while ago to try to live without newspapers for a year and gain all of his news from the internet. As such, his brief post on the fact that the 24 hours news cycle, which has arisen out of our greed for ‘knowledge’ and has resulted in a lot of boredom and what I was class as substandard, scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel stories.
It makes me wonder – has the destruction of all barriers to publishing online assisted this? Couple the desire for instant information with the need for neverending novelty and isn’t this inevitable? Yes, everyone can be a ‘published writer’ now, but does that mean everyone should? And if you haven’t got anything original to add, should you perhaps choose not to add anything at all? These are all questions that I think need answering. The human mind is capable of so much originality, but when everyone is trying to be original all at once, then perhaps that originality will inevitably dry up? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do think they need to be considered.
Vincenzini’s example of the iPad cacophony is perfect. I noticed it myself when I went through my Google Reader a couple of days ago after my sojourn away from the daily PC. After I had read the first couple of articles, I got impatient. I then marked as read every post which had iPad in the title. Even that wasn’t enough so in a fit of frustration I marked the whole lot as read. I know I probably missed some really good posts in that block, but I just couldn’t be bothered wading through the repetition. I am sure I am not the only one who suffered iPad fatigue after a matter of minutes.
So, what can we do about it? Particularly those people who are starting out with a blog, but also those people who are already bloggers and those who prefer to read rather than contribute.
Firstly, decide who your blog is for. Is it for you – to keep a record of what you are doing, your thoughts about a subject or your writing? Or is it for an audience of customers, fellow enthusiasts or prospects? In the former case, you can do as you will, but in the latter case, remember that this audience is struggling just as much with the excess of information as you are. Give them something original.
Secondly, if you are writing about a well covered topic (such as social media!), think twice before you add your voice to the fray. Do you really need to write something else about the latest gadget, site or social media trend? Or could you go to your list of possible blog topics which you have saved for a rainy day, and write about something different?
Thirdly, consider how often you are writing. It is highly commendable that you want to write five times a day, but is that going to give you the most impact. I have to use the examples of Brian Solis and Dosh Dosh who both write less frequently, but whose posts are so well researched and thought out that you don’t want to miss one. If either of them wrote three times a day, their writing would definitely lose something, and I know I for one would resort to skimming like I do with many other blogs.
The fact we can all create content is a wonderful thing, but I think the euphoria of that has passed. The time has come to be a bit more thoughtful about what you are producing and asking yourself whether it is really news, really necessary, or really valuable to your audience. Doing so will save your hard effort from getting lost completely in the ever increasing noise.
Thanks to Twaize for the image
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Tags: 24-hour news, blog content, Flat Earth News
