Reinventing the Blog

by Sophia Raw

Software revue is just as important as product revue...
A department store sees the need to change the way they represent their products to you from time to time, they study the shopping patterns of their customers and change their store layout accordingly, all to keep you there for longer and to make your visit as satisfying as possible. Why not follow the same sort of procedure when thinking about how to best display information to readers?

Blog Architecture has been on my mind a lot the last week and what really got me thinking was this Pearsonified post. But before I jump in and change the way our blog looks, according to my idea of blogging reading patterns, I would love some feedback on what you as a reader would like to experience.

A blog can be a gold mine of knowledge, but with one flaw, unlike any good encyclopaedia blogs lack a decent index. Ok to be fair you can use the search function, but what if you don't know what to search for, what if you just want to see the different areas covered by the blog, call it areas of expertise.
Gone are the days where blogs have a diary kind of identity, the future (in a highly competitive blog world) is representing information in such a way, that readers have more control over the information they want to read.
Don't make them page through 10 pages just to get to a post that has some interested to them, give them navigation, give them a view of what they can find.
Why lose a valuable post, just because it is a year old, and no one will page back that far, unless they know about it, or see it in some sort of an index?
Information does not belong in a hierarchy system, chronologically ordered, no, it should be a network accessed according to your needs.

I would love some feedback on the following areas:

Do you subscribe to RSS feeds? If yes, do you still visit the actual site? If yes, why?
Do you read blog posts from latest to oldest, irrelevant of the topic?
Do you look at the most recent lists, or most recent comments lists?
Do you use the search tool?
Would you like to view blog posts according to categories?
Are you interested in what we see as the most valuable posts?
Would you prefer to read blurbs or the full articles on the home page?
Would you like to rate posts and see a list of the most highly rated posts?
Can you determine from reading our home page, what our areas of expertise are?

Basically I want to know what YOU want so we can give it to you, simple as that.

2007/02/05 | permalink | comments (6) | trackbacks (0)

Comments

post a comment

I like your thinking soph. Here are my answers - looking forward to seeing the outcome! 1. Yes, occasionally I will visit my favourite sites or one that I know will give me something specific if I don't feel like logging into the reader. 2. Scan latest to oldest looking for interesting topics. 3. Not the comments 4. Never 5. Yes - it makes it easier to find topics of interest 6. Sometimes - perhaps per topic? 7. Full articles 8. I find rating things weird. I probably never would. 9. Yes and I like the fact that this blog is fun & informal as well as interesting & informative.

Posted by Charlotte on 2007/02/06

Lots of ideas here.. I think one of the keys is tagging content. I find tag clouds more useful than category listings. although, at the end of the day this doesn't do much to highlight specific posts but rather general areas. I wonder if it would be useful to allow users to tag each post themselves and allow visitors to view user tags? If you want to show your best work / posts, you'll need to allow readers to vote (possibly via a simple thumbs-up / thumbs-down button?). Perhaps you could combine this vote data with other factors such as direct access via permalinks, trackback usage etc. to show a most valuable posts list. I also think that the sidebar is an often wasted space (especially with things like calendars ;) ) and the order of items should be looked at too (Author links above archives, recent posts??)

Posted by thescott on 2007/02/06

i guess the other issue is that more and more people access blogs via rss, so the sidebar area becomes irrelevant. perhaps the actual feed needs to have supplementary links in the footer such as related posts etc.

Posted by thescott on 2007/02/06

(1) I use RSS, but I often visit the main blog to see the comments. (2) I read latest to oldest as thats the way they come. But I scan and only read ones I'm interested in. (3) On gottaquirk I always look at the most recent comments list just to see what people are discussing. (4) Yep, search tool is useful for finding specific stuff (5) Same as number 4 - it helps in finding stuff. (6) I don't know if everyone agrees on whats most valuable, so this is a tough one? (7) I personally prefer full articles on RSS feeds. I know it takes up more space, but I hate having to load everything I want to read! If we have blurbs, then they have to be a good few lines! (8) Rating is back to being valuable. I think tastes vary? (9) I'm sort of biased here so wont comment.

Posted by Heidi on 2007/02/06

1.Yes to the Feeds – go to the site if there’s something like an image or a video I cant see. 2. Latest to oldest – I scan until I find something that appeals to me. 3. Yup. 4. Yup. 5. Yeah that would be cool. Are you interested in what we see as the most valuable posts? 6. Yup. 7. I prefer full articles. 8. Yes 9 :-)_refer to Heidi’s response.

Posted by Sarah M on 2007/02/06

Yikes, is it possible to be too busy to comment? See you at WebPR+

Posted by rafiq on 2007/02/07

Visit our Website

Post feed
Comment feed

RSS to Email

Get our latest blog posts delivered straight to your inbox.

eMarketing News

Subscribe to our fortnightly newsletter which is packed with interesting eMarketing news, views and other quirky titbits.

January

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

« Dec

Feb »

Recent Comments

Kat on Engaging as a Company

I agree with you. There are some things that should ideally not be discussed by an employee in the public sphere.
Would a communications policy have stopped the said journo from speaking out? He/she must have known a huge risk was being taken? I suppose it's also an incredibly difficult thing to predict. The lack of control can be alarming.
I'm definitely interested in seeing a more specific list, so if you find it do share.
Thank you for your comments :). Here's hoping there's a good coffee shop close to you..
vincent on Engaging as a Company

I guess the mark of a well crafted brand starts at HR policy for new recruits - ensuring that they fit the brand's/corporate's persona. So in that sense yes you could argue that left to their own devices employees would, regardless of an online communications policy, communicate in a style the sponsor would approve of. Not sure if that's always the case but I'm inclined to agree with this generalization.
I think what is also important is that the individual writing within the bounds of a sponsor's site does so in a restricted locale. You can police your own domain if you're a corporate, you can't necessarily control the individuals mouth outside of it. For instance on twitter, personal blogs and forums. Owing to the nature of niche stardom you could argue that the employee comes to represent the brand, more so than that personifies the brand in organic conversation with consumers and would carry significant weight both within corporate sites and externally. Making some individuals very wary to write for their companies at all.
For instance in our not too distant past a prominent journo got the boot for publishing his gripes with his employers and their professional ability - he was promptly fired...He would no doubt have been policed on a company blog but owing to the fact that he chose to represent the company elsewhere he took his brand and the papers brand with him - dragging both through the mud as traipsed on towards epic-failuredom...
So to come back to a point, there is definitely a sense that the policies as listed above are quite ambiguous. Even you yourself suggest that requisite legalese is absent, and I have to assume that such legalese would include a fairly long list of do's and dont's. I have a list somewhere laying about which dictates in a very bland corporate fashion how to represent the brand in public - if I find it I will share it with you.
Perhaps its worthwhile to enforce points like "don't tell secrets" and my own favourite, "for the love of god don't gripe about the boss who you've publicly named online"...
That's my mental-riff for the day, I'm afraid I veered rather uncharitably off course but such is the nature of thought.
Now if only the company I worked for had some decent coffee!!
Kat on Engaging as a Company

Transparency is a key issue - as is allowing people to carve their own niche.
My thinking is that people engage with a personality - an individual personality - in conversation more than with a collective. It's just easier. A company personality surely reflects the people who work there as well as a crafted (constructed?) image that the stakeholders choose to present. While you want engagement it's not the same as speaking to an individual.
There are definite risks involved - but I would lean towards allowing people to carve a niche.
vincent on Engaging as a Company

Couldn't have said it better. Nice post, it is most certainly something corporates are going to struggle with. How much transparency is too much? Who should be allowed to represent a brand and to what extent should the individual be given the opportunity to carve their own niche rather than extol the virtues of the mother - brand?
Who knows. We shall soon see as this year pans out and we find out how the big media players tackle the rise of the cost effective digital media channel.
Kat on Engaging as a Company

It is a tough issue, and I can understand why you've never published. I would encourage you to do so though - you probably have a feeling for when your writing reflects your voice and when it doesn't - and the rewards are worth it.
Thanks for reading Wendy. :)

More photos of the QuirkStars At Play

Name:
Friends of Quirk
Websites:
www.quirk.biz

Skribit: Social Suggestions

Name:
E-mail:
Url:
Comments:
Markup guide: makes text bold // makes text italic // -- creates a link -- (two dashes, no http://)
Remember personal info?
Notify me of follow-up comments?
SPAMCHECK:
Captcha:

Reinventing the Blog

by Sophia Raw

Comments

Subscribe

RSS to Email

eMarketing News

January

Archives

Categories

Recent Posts

Recent Comments