Blog advisors say one has to post at least one article a day to keep peoples attention. I’m going to add my two cents to this statement.

I have subscribed to quite a few blogs, and frankly, I only read them very selectively. For example when I see titles starting with ‘Five ways to…’ I get discouraged to read them more and more. The reason is that most of these articles sum up the obvious, and look more like an excuse to post something than a valuable addition to a subject. Anyone can come up with this kind of articles and not say anything that a person with common sense doesn’t already know. You’ll lose less time doing one indepth search on your subject than read such blogs I would think, and you’ll get much more valuable information overall.

Some companies offer a weekly wrap-up of their articles. Then I wonder what is the difference between one poor article a day or a stack of them once a week. A jewel hidden among them could get lost that way. To my opinion, if you have nothing interesting to say, don’t say anything at all. Better send a joke instead, then at least some people are amused. Obviously that implies you’ll eventually have to let go of ‘political correctness’ to avoid getting cheesy in the long run, and many would consider that a risk.

Some famous people with blogs post very long articles with lots of personal story that I believe more resembles fanmail, or go way too deep into their subject to keep the attention of the reader. Not all readers are fan, and no matter how rich your are, that still doesn’t make you an interesting writer.

My point is that I don’t believe the customer is more happy with getting frequent crappy reads than with getting less frequent ‘readable’ articles that bear some depth and analysis. When adding the appropriate references, an article also does not need to be long. It can be a thesis based on different reads. Adding an executive summary is a way to get around the fact that sometimes there simply is a lot to say about a subject, and keep the impatient reader coming back without reading your entire article.

I guess a solution would be to select your readers in different groups, offer some kind of subscriptions. I believe the blogger’s contact with the reader would be a lot better, and you would get happier readers.