There’s a damned good reason I am a Seth Godin follower. It’s because he continually proves to me that I am never wasting my time following him with content like this.
“The Internet has been stuck in September ever since. Every day, new people show up at your blog, on Facebook, everywhere. Every day it’s a whole new crop that need to figure out what RSS is and how to subscribe. Every day there are people who spam their address book because it feels like a fine thing to do, then learn their lesson and never do it again.” Read this entire post! I mean it!
Just like everyone else, I am continually fighting the battle of reporting on the shiniest, newest things in my industry while at the same time worrying about the newbies who hit my site wondering where the webring is.
Bridging the gap between your readers who have been with you awhile and are up to speed on your industry and the newbies who continually stumble onto your site wondering what the heck you’re talking about is difficult.
You don’t want to alienate your new readers who will need some counseling on where to go, what to do, and how to do it. But you also don’t want to bore or inconvenience your regular readers who know what’s up and are ready for more in-depth stuff from you.
Giving this issue serious thought will certainly produce more regular readers for your blog if you can figure out how to keep September alive while graduating the regulars to higher degrees of information.
-Here’s another closely related issue Seth just posted on: Your World VS The World.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Funnily enough this is the second time today I’m reading about new readers versus regular readers thing. That blog was about Wordpress hacks so not everything will apply but there are some good suggestions ( categorize by difficulty , series for new comers , using skirbit etc ) link – http://nice2all.com/2009/05/21/question-and-answer-time/
Thanks for the insight and the shout out, Jack
It is funny how we walk away from basics assuming everyone knows them. I deal with people new to the blogging each and every day and continually going back to basics to share the needed info is one of the tasks I try to automate.
Which brings good point – I need to do same on my blog
Thanks for sharing Jack!
@Alex – Maybe we both need to think about an ongoing series just titled “The Basics: [topic]” In fact, maybe everyone should! There’s a lot of content possibility there and more ways to get noticed in the engines by simply laying out out the basics of the higher-end stuff we talk about. Yep – that’s on the list!
I definetely agree, new people into the world of bloggins is hard enough as it is to deal with. we just have to breath deep in and bee patient, we where once like them weren’t we