Recently, I wondered why no one reads my blogs after I started rereading Cal Newport's How to Be a High School Superstar. In the book, he used blogging as an example to illustrate the advice-guide method. Instead of solely relying on blind effort, this method encourages high school students to ask experts in a particular field they are interested in about advice on how to succeed. Newport took an hour or two to research the characteristics of successful and mediocre blogs. He noticed that the mediocre blogs were informal, didn't have a focus (tangents about author's personal life). More importantly, the bloggers didn't put in a lot of effort in the writing because the ideas were disorganized. For Newport, it appeared that the bloggers cared more about quantity (how many blogs published) than quality. As a result, the ideas were not insightful or unique.
Before I keep going, I would like to clarify that Newport was pretending to be a high school student interested in personal finance blogs. My blog is in no way about personal finance. In fact, my blog is kind of like a diary or personal journal. Nevertheless, Newport's analysis prompted me to reflect upon the quality of my blogs. The possible reasons that very few people read my blogs is that my writing is very disorganized. When Newport mentioned the word mind dumping, I knew immediately he was describing someone like me. I am unable to focus on the matter on hand because I digress about other subjects. Also, I am not taking writing classes to improve my writing.
Maybe I am too harsh on myself, but I believe it is necessary to be aware of my weaknesses.
Before I keep going, I would like to clarify that Newport was pretending to be a high school student interested in personal finance blogs. My blog is in no way about personal finance. In fact, my blog is kind of like a diary or personal journal. Nevertheless, Newport's analysis prompted me to reflect upon the quality of my blogs. The possible reasons that very few people read my blogs is that my writing is very disorganized. When Newport mentioned the word mind dumping, I knew immediately he was describing someone like me. I am unable to focus on the matter on hand because I digress about other subjects. Also, I am not taking writing classes to improve my writing.
Maybe I am too harsh on myself, but I believe it is necessary to be aware of my weaknesses.
Comments
Post a Comment