I’ll again revert to Skelliewag where Skellie answers a very interesting question: “How to Avoid Fool’s Gold and Create Value-packed Content?” This post is packed with great tips and ideas on how to go about fostering audience fidelity.
If you want to go professional there’s no other way than providing quality stuff, ‘value-packed content’. But what is value for one may not be value for the other. There will always be a certain amount of bias.
Skellie mentioned about creating a wish list. Although I’d agree with it, I wonder if it really works. Already with the information overload era where time is precious there’s much fuss about the question of priorities. I am a bit sceptical about an overburdened audience responding to your queries about what they’d like you to give them. I guess it might also be a question of ego and mastery.
An audience will either comment or not all. Either they’ll appreciate or they won’t; they’ll not necessarily voice out. Now this reminds me of a famous lecturer who at the end of his presentation asked his audience whether they had any questions they’d like answered. He was surprised there was none. So he said: “Either I’ve done it so brilliantly and everything was crystal clear and you understood so well that you don’t have any queries, or it was so boring and confusing that you haven’t understood at all and you dare not ask any question.” There was a complete silence again. Then he added: “I only hope it’s the first one, otherwise I’ll have to go back to the books.” Everybody laughed as if to break the monotony.
No comments, however, doesn’t meant they are not interested with your stuff or they don’t appreciate. Very often they don’t want to spend time thinking about what they’ll write as comments or answers to your questions, unless they are regular and loyal. Now if at all they comment they’ll do so for any of the three following reasons:
(i) comment to give a make a valuable contribution to the discussion – positive approach;
(ii) comment to say nothing constructive; or just to mark their presence as regular or loyal visitors lest your forget them; and
(iii) comment to annoy you – negative criticism.
But all this boils down to what mission you’ve set yourself for your blog. And this is wide ranging: from pleasure of writing on an open platform to giving advice through just gossip. Have you come across some (many) blogs which look very popular with loads of comments with no real value elements; there’s nothing more than gossip, although nicely written? But there are many out there for commercial purpose.
That’s why I’d rather say value depends on who you are, what you do and for whom you are doing it. Value goes hand in hand with ethics. But that’s another issue.
Anyway, it was an interesting “value-packed” piece out there loaded with interesting tips for anybody still thinking about how to optimize their site; and I can only commend it.
Alfa King Memories
Mauritian residing in Rodrigues, Amanoola Khayrattee (pen name Alfa King) is contributing writer and journalist to La Gazette Mag de l’océan indien and This Week News Mauritius.
Retired, former meteorological cadre, trade unionist and OSH consultant, Amanoola has written for in-house union and other journals, publications and magazines. He runs two blogs since 2007: “Alfa King Memories”, and “Le Journal d’Alfa King”. When he is not reading or writing, he is on a 10+ km daily hike in anticipation of his monthly trails.
Amanoola may be reached at [email protected].