Archive for October, 2009
Writing For A Major Blog October 16th, 2009
This just got tweeted about, so I feel the need to add a little. I wrote the below text when I was but a spry new member of TNW. Now probably 200 posts or so into my time with TNW, what do I think that is different?
Speed is more important than I thought - and write dickish headlines.
The faster you get to the important nugget of news, say that Apple has blown its nose, you have probably four to eight minutes to get a post up on it. That’s doable. Plenty of time to hammer at the keys, and sling invective.
But once your wonderful post, which thousands will read via the website and RSS, how do you title it? Take the title, remove 10% of the truth, and crank the hype to 11. I declare it the Alex Ratio. Trademark.
But more than anything the tech blogging world is very competitively friendly. The team to break the story very nearly gets the lion share of the traffic. But everyone must cover it, assuming that it is of suffiecient importance. Or it is Apple related. Same thing to most people, comically.
Oh yes, comment baiting works. Like this: -> write your opinion. Wait.
That’s all, see everyone on Twitter.
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If you are reading this, you probably know that I used to write actively for TechGeist. I have since moved over most of my writing to TheNextWeb, with Zee, Boris, and the whole crew. It has taken some of my time away from midVentures, but that is just the way life works. After writing for TNW for a while, and a few dozen posts, I wanted to share a few insights about tech blogging, and blogging in general for a large blog.
TheNextWeb is a major European technology blog, and I represent one of the two US authors, bringing in the perspective from the States. I write between three and ten posts a day for them, depending on what exactly is going on, and how quickly I get to the story. Mike Bracco is the other US blogger. Nice guy.
Technology blogging is all about speed. When a story breaks, every major tech blog pounces pretty much at the same time. How fast you get to the story can determine what share of the traffic that will surround that particular story. This means you need t o write quickly, or fall behind even more quickly.
I’m not sure how this post is going to go, in all honesty, I fell like it is devolving into some sort of paragraphed bullet points.
Another distinction, who are you writing for? It truly depends. Digg? Your RSS subscribers? Every audience needs its own special niche. Its own content flavor, etc.
Do you like sleeping? Then blogging is not for you. Up late, up early, laptop in your teeth.
Also, do you have a thin skin? If so, you are not cut out to blog, just take a look at this.
Does any of that help? I’m not sure what to share. If you had asked me 10 months ago, before TechGeist or TheNextWeb, I think that I would have known what to ask. As it stands, I am far to close to know what to say. I love blogging, how is that?
Tags: blogging
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Headed To TheNextWeb October 11th, 2009
I am headed over to The Next Web for a while to do some writing. I do apologize to the few hundred people that are subscribed to this feed, for all the silence. For the near future, you can track my writing here for TNW. I am so far truly enjoying my time there, @Zee and @Boris have made me quite welcome. Oh, and in other news I unfollowed everyone on Twitter. If you think that I should be following you, send me an @.
Finally, a big thank you to everyone who has signed onto my Facebook page, it’s been fun talking to you all over there. Until soon, peace!
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