Having shifted my blogging approach this year to offer more perspective than news reporting, a post on Social Media Today entitled "5 Ways to Make Your Blog Posts Outstanding" caught my attention.
The suggestions are fine but there's one crucial element missing: high-quality content that enlightens, engages, entertains or educates. Far too often, blog posts are whipped off for the sake of having a blog post each and every day. As a result, there's little of substance being offered other than perhaps a tidbit of information. The post fills a void but it is not adding much to the conversation.
In many respects, this is just the way the blog game is played given volume (aka most posts) is seen to be as important as quality. It can be one of the most frustrating parts of blogging to see something offering different/unique perspective or insight be ignored while a post on a service going off-line for a short period of captures enraptures everyone.
At the end of the day, most bloggers should focus on quality because there is no way they can compete for attention on volume. When blogging is not your job and it doesn't generate enough ad revenue to buy more than a cup of coffee each day, why would you focus on not writing posts that display your insight and perspective? When someone reads your blog - even if doesn't get a lot of traffic - there is an opportunity to make an impression.
If I'm riding a theme in 2011, it's going to be quality versus quantity. One of the pitfalls of the social media toolkit now available to everyone is the barriers to entry are minimal. Creating content is easier than ever but just because you can create content doesn't mean it has to happen, including blog posts.