Meta CbN Part 2: Good Blogs Care

Continuing bravely on here with this obsession, but I should add an aside. In the past 2-3 years I’ve learned about a part of website development called content strategy. I love it, and I’ve done some CS work, but I’ve learned the most about what’s important in content strategy (quality content) while writing this blog. It ties into the next three of Merlin’s thoughts:

• Good blog posts are made of paragraphs.
• Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation.
• Good blogs try.

Quality deserves three of Merlin’s bullet points because a blog that doesn’t try to do a good job or want to provide something of value to its readers is a blog whose existence is suspect. I certainly don’t want to read it. Good bloggers create original content and cost the writer time and effort. Good blogs are the product of an actual person’s thoughts and ideas and are that person’s original concept. The content type is immaterial–words, videos, pictures or something else–as long as it’s real stuff someone came up with for that blog. A good blog is a creative product and process all on its own.

Why do I care? Because I’m participating in the Internet, and in blogging, and by reading this so are you, and I care about both of us, and I care that you and I are sometimes poorly served by some of the Internet’s content.

I’m fascinated by the possibilities of this gigantic collaborative communications forum called the Internet. I think future historians will go nuts over the implications and consequences of this thing. I think having millions of voices contributing billions of largely censorship free and interest-driven links, tidbits, journals and conversations to one giant, collective, easily-accessible repository is powerful. It’s a forum as yet mostly un-mediated by any authority and largely independent of the boundaries of any political entity. People can opine, express and persuade one another directly, without a journalistic filter. We inspire, amaze, are radical, traditional. We share and adapt and create collectively. The internet is the biggest, most gossipy, fickle and judgmental, most human expression of collective humanity I’ve ever seen. It’s awesome.

It’s also hungry for good content. By “good” I don’t mean that grammar/spelling gurus, religious/political authorities, or your 3rd grade teacher approved it. I don’t mean it has to be serious or even very coherent. I mean that it is original, interest-driven content that provides value to someone else. Even if that value is someone listening to you and taking the time to disagree with you about your opinion on level 3 warlocks in a sub-forum of a gaming community. Heck, the lolcat meme is silly fun, but I go back to it when I have a bad day, and it makes thousands of people laugh. That’s value.

Many people throw junk at the internet. They hope it gets them money, followers, or both, but they don’t want to give anything of value back to their audience. PR hacks think blogs are the 21st century tool to keep themselves in business and keep selling you stuff, even if it’s bad for you. Affiliate marketers con you into thinking you’re reading a real review when it’s a paid person with 10 logins spamming Amazon. Some newspapers think regurgitating already-published material into a blog saves their bacon with the young people. Business owners start ghost-written blogs neatly packaged by the Corporate Communications department. People “game” membership sites to get more followers they care nothing about. Website owners don’t understand their unrelated, obnoxious advertising is part of their content too. I could go on.

The internet = content, and a lot of it is junk. I write these articles, and this blog in general, because it’s my thing, part of my contribution, to something I care about. And if you think about it, what I care about isn’t the internet itself, it’s the people on the internet. I care that bloggers, and other people, are putting good content into this collective thing and yet reaping junk from people who don’t respect them or understand what all this internet stuff is about. A blog isn’t a business bandwagon to jump on, it’s a platform for unique, creative content.

So. Write well. Write often. Care. Even if what you write isn’t a masterpiece, the effort really does matter.