Text is Art, Content is King
Welcome to Insanely Interested, the blog about looking at the world through curious and creative eyes that can't settle for just one interest. Check out our about page for more information! We hope you find this blog interesting and thought-provoking. Enjoy!
Let me ask you a question.
I’m sure you’ve seen this question asked before, but humor me and answer it once more. I promise it won’t take long, but answering it will make you better prepared for reading the rest of this post.
All you need to do is to use the poll below and pick the answer that best describes your online reading habits:
It’s going to be interesting to see the results. Although some say it’s just a myth, there seems to be a consensus in the blogging world that the most likely answer is somewhere between “I don’t” and “I skim through the headlines and bullet points.”
Of course, not everyone reads the same way. But unfortunately it seems that the people who are the most likely to not read online are the ones we see as the ideal online citizens; the active users who have the most experience in leading an online lifestyle.
This is speculative, I know, but these are the people who know how to use RSS and who are quick to find new blogs to follow. Quite often they have a collection of more than 100 blog subscriptions - some have passed 300 a long time ago. And their collections are growing.
Against this background, is it any surprise if the heavy users don’t have the time to read the blogs they think they are following? How do you expect someone subscribed to over 100 blogs to focus in each and every post put out day in and day out? Reading them, thinking about them and commenting on a few of them would be a full time job of its own.
How do I know? Simply because I have been one of these people for a long time.
But who told us that we need to follow hundreds of blogs?
Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to focus on a few great ones that help us find information to question our beliefs, create new ideas, and build a better understanding of the world? Instead, we hide under a pile of blogs, only reading a few words here and there — usually words that confirm our current ways of thinking.
It’s just easier that way: if we would stop and read the ones that require thinking, we would be left behind by the new blog posts being put out every minute.
The Challenge
Through this post I want to challenge you to change your online reading habits. And if you are a blogger, I want you to join the new wave of bloggers who question the conventional blogging wisdom gathered so far.
I have written my share of blog posts that do nothing more than make the current consensus sound more widely accepted — adding to the noise and making it harder for new, valuable content to rise above the crowd. Just like most bloggers writing about blogging, I have told people that if they want to get more subscribers they need to maintain a constant flow of new posts. I have told them that to collect attention they need to write bold headlines (because people don’t read online). I have told that it is OK to revisit old posts if you don’t have anything new to say, and that lists are a good way to make your posts easier to skim.
While most, if not all of these ideas make sense, they have all been said so many times that now I want to cry every time I read yet another blogger share them as the key to blogging success. We are like a bunch of parrots, repeating the same song over and over again, hoping that when we push it out consistently, in the end it will become the truth.
The problem is that we don’t know for a fact if these really are the fundamental steps to building a successful blog or not. Sure, most of the successful bloggers out there are following these tips (they are the ones who shared them in the first place). But are they successful because they assume that people don’t read online — or despite of it?
What if we stopped assuming that? What if instead of saying that there’s nothing we can do to make people read online we took the opposite stand?
What if we stood up boldly and said:
People will read online. And even if no one else will, I’m ready to be the first one.
Readers
If you are a heavy consumer of blog posts, I want to stop you for long enough so that I can save you from the fast lane where you just shovel blog posts to stay on top of your reading schedule. I want you to see that many of the blogs are just repeating the same ideas over and over again, and that what is said doesn’t help you at all if you don’t take the time to think about it.
I want to help you become a smart blog reader.
- Focus on quality: Forget all about quantity. Following more blogs won’t make you any better informed. In fact, according to the author of The Black Swan
, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, it can make you worse off because you start to feel as if you know a lot, have read a lot and gotten a lot of information, while honestly, you haven’t even had time to understand the articles and headlines you’ve been inhaling.
I suggest you pick ten of the best quality blogs on your favorite topics and unsubscribe from all the rest.
If this is too much to take at once, don’t go all the way in one step. Just unsubscribe from as many as you can now and then take the next round later when you feel ready for it. (Remember that even if you unsubscribe from some blog, you can still check it out every now and then to see how it’s doing.)
- Reserve time: It’s common to browse through the blog subscriptions in the small free moments between tasks. This causes us to reach out for quick fixes; we read easy posts that don’t require thinking and ignore the important ones.
A smart reader won’t fall into this trap. She tries not to read in these small moments but reserves longer, uninterrupted time slots so that she can think about what she’s reading, and enjoy the challenge given by the text, not just read to pass time.
- Give up on RSS: I’ve been a big fan of RSS ever since I subscribed to my first blog (it was love at first sight). But I must admit that it’s not a safe tool for a blogaholic like myself. RSS makes you feel way too powerful, giving you the false impression that following 300 blogs at once is no big deal, and that it is, in fact, the very thing that you should be doing.
If you can fight this reality twisting effect of RSS, it’s a good idea to keep using it. Otherwise, consider dropping RSS and trying something else like email subscriptions instead.
- Question everything: When you focus on a smaller number of blogs and reserve enough time for them, you will be in a much better position to think about what you read. So, make sure you get the benefits by both questioning what you read and letting the text question what you think you know: Think about the articles. Think about how they affect your life. Think about how they affect your world view. Think about how they relate to other articles you are reading. Remember that you don’t know everything — but don’t forget that neither does the writer.
If I’m one of the bloggers that only build up the noise, I think it’s only fair if you unsubscribe from my posts. That’s how I will know that I’m not providing value. Don’t feel sorry for me (I might cry, but it’s not your fault — it’s mine). This way, by unsubscribing from the blogs that don’t help you improve your thinking you are helping the blogosphere become a more useful, less noisy place that can make a difference.
Bloggers
As bloggers, we have even more to win here than the readers.
We do want our articles to be read carefully, don’t we? It’s not like we spend hours working on our blogs just so that someone can skim through our headlines and skip all the important content we try to share with them. We share our thoughts with the world to see how others react, to test the ideas and to see if they will fly or not.
That’s why it’s really us who need to be the ones who get out in the streets to show the example and inspire others to finally start reading online.
We should tell our readers to be ruthlessly honest and tell us when we suck. We should tell our readers to unsubscribe if they don’t find us useful.
We need to focus on quality and stop filling the Internet with noise that does nothing but echoes what every other blogger is already saying.
- Cut the crap: You don’t have to post every day. Our readers have limited time available for reading blogs, so by posting less frequently we allow them to follow more blogs without sacrificing the quality of their thinking. If instead of posting every day we would all post just once per week, our readers could follow seven times more blogs with the same effort as they do now.
- Don’t settle for mediocre: Make sure you publish your best work only. By posting less often, you’ll have the time to fine tune your posts and you can guarantee your content is top class, that you are giving out some real value, and that you can consider your text to be art.
If you don’t think your post would qualify for the Digg front page, it might not be worth posting (unless you don’t appreciate Digg success and want to use some other measure instead. Just make sure that you give your best, every time).
- Make your text readable: When you decide to focus on quality and join the crusade for making people read online, you might get carried away and forget that it will take time for your readers to follow your lead. It will take time for them to get rid of their current habit of skimming. That’s why it still makes sense to grab their attention with interesting headlines, good looking images and great writing.
Just make sure you use the tricks to make people realize your posts are worth reading, and not just to make them easier to skim.
- Be smart with links: Sure, it’s good to link to ideas that support what you are saying. But what we often forget is that it makes sense to link to people we disagree with. It shows that there is room for different opinions in this world, and that a blog post isn’t good only if it confirms our own views.
Showing that you’re willing to link to ideas you don’t agree with tells your readers that you value discussion more than selling your own world view and that it’s a good idea to be open for new ways of thinking and looking at the world.
And finally, tell your readers that you want them to read your posts and that you are one of the bloggers who believe that “text is art, and content is king.” Tell them that it’s a good idea to read the articles and think about them instead of just checking out headlines and keywords.
Some might take your word for it.
I believe that by changing the way we read online we can change the way online content is valued. We can make blogging the first class medium it deserves to be, a place where high quality writing meets the full freedom of speech granted by the fact that we’re not tied to any big media companies and their business based values.
All we need to do is to raise the expectations for a blog post’s quality, and then make sure our writing lives up to these standards.
Take Action
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What do you think? Am I fighting windmills or can we change the world so that in a few years, the common understanding will no longer be “people don’t read online” but the very opposite?
In the spirit of this article, I hope you take some time to question my claims before accepting them. And more than anything, I hope you will tell me whether you agree with me or not — and why.
That’s what a smart reader will do.
Insanely Interested
Of course, these four are not the only ones out there who get it. But still, the total number of awesome bloggers could be much higher — and I believe it will be, soon.
Before moving to the conversational part (also known as the comments section), I want to say a few words about this new blog I’m launching today — the one you are reading right now.
My original plan was just to move my old blog, Jarkko Laine - Insanely Interested in Everything to this domain, polish up the looks, and otherwise continue the same way as before. But while planning for the new version, I started to realize that I wanted to do more than just some cosmetic changes. I wanted to have a fresh start with a blog that can live up to the title of this post, “Text is Art, Content is King.”
On this blog, I will not post every day. In the first weeks there will probably be a post coming out every week, but after that, in order to maintain a high quality, I plan to only put out one post every two weeks.
What will remain the same from my original blog will be the topic. This is a blog about being insanely interested in everything, and even more importantly, a blog for people insanely interested in all the different things life brings your way every day.
You will hear stories of people who put their intense curiosity and creativity to play and created fabulous results. You will see practical tips on how to make the most out of your innate curiosity. You will pick up ideas to tickle your mind and make you question the world you know.
I hope you will find Insanely Interested worth subscribing to. But if you don’t think this blog will create value for you, don’t subscribe just to add to your collection of feeds. That’s how I think the blogosphere will work the best.
18 Responses
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Let Your Voice Be Heard
- Coming Up on January 8, 2009 Consuming for Nothing
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Well, good luck. I hope this new enterprise will work out for you. However it seems quite extreme to me- how can you ensure every post is a work of art? Surely that is subjective? I’m hoping that my doubts will be unfounded and that you will succeed, but it feels to me that this aim for ‘post perfection’ would be incredibly stressful, to you as the blogger, in the long run. I know that I, personally, would feel strained by having the pressure of always writing artful, royal-quality posts..
I don’t mean to be negative. I’m sorry. Good luck, Jarkko, I hope you will enjoy this new blog, I wish you success! Have fun!
These are some great questions, Jess!
You are right, there is no objective way to judge whether a post is a piece of art. But the same goes with music, and art of every kind: how do you decide if a pop song is a piece of art or not?
But on the other hand, I wouldn’t want to write a song I wouldn’t consider art. And I wouldn’t want to write a book so with a lower goal than to make it as perfect as I subjectively can. So, why should I have any lower standards for my blogging?
I guess this is a different take on blogging, and we’re about to find out how it will work out. Basically, I believe that the posts should evoke thought and encourage people to pursue wisdom rather than just confirmation. It’s still open if this is the way to reach that goal, and whether this is too heavy for me as a blogger and the rest of the world as readers. I don’t think so (but I might well be wrong too…)
Thanks for the wishes! I hope you enjoy what I have been planning for the future :)
Hey, visiting from Writer Dad.
I hate, hate, hate that I see the same crap everywhere when it comes to new age thinking/living and the secrets to blog success. I tend to like blogs that are human case studies and not claiming to have the best way to do something.
I’ll be back. Thanks for this.
I love the split screen post text effect you did. Certainly don’t recall seeing that on any other blog.
Money is made online in niches. So by virtue of your insanely interested approach, you’re going to have a lot of difficulty making any. Unless of course you can find an all encompassing category to rank well on. Breaking the mold will either make you rich, or accomplish nothing.
You have always produced high quality posts that are more worthy than most to be read in their entirety. I will continue reading. I have great respect for you and the amount of work / time you obviously put into each and every one of your posts.
And now it all makes sense, as I subscribe to your RSS feed… Google Reader kills the art factor. I guess one of the issues is that RSS doesn’t always look pretty compared to the real site. Your regular readers are probably using RSS…
@Matthew: That’s exactly why I love Writer Dad’s stuff. It’s all because of the human touch. His small, insightful real-life stories do something most well marketed blog posts “done by the book” can’t. They make me read.
And apparently, as so many people are following his writing, and commenting on his blog, he must be doing something right. That’s what gives me hope that it is possible for people to really read a blog, and enjoy it.
@Nimic: You know what the funny thing is? I honestly believe I have a niche. But for some reason people tend to think that I don’t have one… So that makes me think that my niche is probably not very well defined or that I’m not doing that good a job explaining what my topic is ;)
So, it’s possible that I won’t make much money with my blogs, but I’ll try to work on it… By working on the about page, the initial welcome message and the selection of posts I hope I can make it clear that I write about being insanely interested in everything, and not about everything. (Or maybe I’m the only one who thinks those two concepts are separate from each other.)
The fact that Google Reader doesn’t render my split screen effect nicely is a shame… And the artsy stuff I have in mind for future posts will probably look even worse than today’s two columns, so I’m thinking that I might change this blog to use partial feeds (yes, I know I have spoken rather strongly for sharing full feeds, but this might be the exception that confirms the rule.)
Thanks for the support, and I hope you are wrong about the niche stuff ;)
Jarkko - *Bravo* the site looks amazing and I can’t wait to see where this new adventure takes you!! As a fellow “insanely interested” individual I am also looking forward to your practical tips on “how to make the most out of your innate curiosity.”
@Mark: Thanks! I can’t wait either :) Now I must resist the urge to hurry with my next post so that I can make it great.
Jarkko - I am sure I am wrong. You obviously appeal to other bloggers, and you have a zen habits self help and self discovery aspect as well. I feel like you and your readers are on a journey together. I’m confident that your “rebranding” is going to give you the power to define the niche further… I think your in a niche of your own, I didn’t mean to insinuate that you didn’t have one.
I apologize if my previous post sounded a little negative, re-reading it I’m not too happy with the tone ;).
@Nimic: No, I don’t think you were being too negative at all. I’m glad you posted that comment as it made me realize that I still have the same problem as before: my niche looks nothing like a niche to many (maybe even most?) people.
That’s definitely something I need to work on as I try to market my writing beyond the existing reader base from my other blog. It’s something I had forgotten, so thanks for the reminder!
Love your new design! It’s very clean and easy to read. Can’t wait to read your future posts.
@Naomi: Thanks, that means a lot to me! I’m looking forward to them as well :)
Jarkko,
I has been a little while since I have commented on your blog. I just wanted to give you an update and thank you for the advice you gave me on starting a blog. I finally got one up and running. Good luck with the new site.
middleclassdream@wordpress.com
Jarkko, I just came to this site through your Blog Action Day post, which is featured on their site.
I want you to know that as I read through your post, I started sitting up straighter and straighter, paying more attention, and in the end I was almost cheering. This is the kind of blogger I want to be - quality not quantity.
I think there’s an extent to which I feel some loyalty to people on my Googlereader feeds, but I have to accept that I will never read them all, so I’m going to go and cut down right away. And maybe prune my blogroll, or simply not publish one.
Thanks for this articulation of something I’ve been feeling for some time.
On the look of the site - I think it’s great, but on IE version 6, which we have to use at work (I am on lunch break, I should add!!) you have to scroll to reach the right side of the screen, which I presume isn’t the intent? I’ll check it on Firefox when I get home tonight.
This is one of the landmark posts of the year for me. It sums up everything that writing (and reading) online should be: responsible, insightful, engaging, and content-driven. It should also be fun, of course!
I think that the trend towards reading online is a process that’s already occurring naturally, backed by the increase in mobile Web use and spurred on by the decrease in newspaper and magazine subscription as more readers crossgrade to the screen.
Reading online won’t be without its contenders. There’s a lot to be said for video content as a means to explore, educate, and have fun, and I think much of it’s untapped right now. While video is not always convenient for all and though it’s far more time-consuming and expensive to produce, the barriers to entry in the semi-professional video world are lowering all the time. I think that — for all the talk of interactivity — the Web is still a largely passive, one-way experience, and publishers owe it to us all to find new ways to consume and enjoy news and information whilst maintaining accessibility and without sacrificing value.
There are also typographical challenges, design considerations, and technological improvements that still need to be addressed to encourage more to read and watch online. Much of it’s already happening behind the scenes and trickling into upcoming products and services, which can only be great news for content publishers and readers alike.
Whatever the shift in reading trends and mediums, one thing’s for sure: it’s an exciting time to be connected. Congrats on the new blog and I look forward to reading about what’s in store!
I’ve never been so captivated by a post about blogging. Your vision is inspiring.
I started out as a daily blogger. I loved the content I was producing in the beginning. But the blog became a burden and the quality of my posts just couldn’t compare to the ones I produced in the first few weeks. As time went on, my posts became fewer and further between until I nearly gave up on my blog.
Recently, my post frequency seems to be leveling at about 1 every 2 weeks. This gives me time to for inspiration (which, incidentally, is what my blog is about. Try writing about inspiration when you’re not inspired.) And, I can also keep a few drafts on the canvas, instead of pushing them out before I fall in love with them.
I think there will always be readers who want mass quantities of fruitless information, and there are millions of blogs to appease them. But, for the rest of us, you have a different vision. It’s a minority vision, but I believe there’s a strong market.
And, as an ‘insanely interested’ person myself, I think your niche is pretty clear. Not everyone is insanely interested in everything, and those people probably won’t understand your niche. Those who do understand this overwhelming yet gratifying condition will read every word.
Jarkko..? It is November already! Are you ok? I’ve been looking forward to your first post, but its publish-date has come and gone…
Thanks for the comments, friends! October sure went past quickly…
@Chett: Nice to see that your blog is taking off! So, good luck to you too!
@Tess: I know, I have had the same thing with my Google Reader feeds (and still do, for many of the remaining ones). Even though I don’t read a big part of them, it’s still hard to cut them out, either. I think that it’s probably harder for bloggers like you and me, because we know how precious the RSS figures are to other bloggers (and us, no matter how we rationalize about them).
Thanks for the bug report too, I’ll try to fix it today :)
@Nick: You’re right, reading and writing is not the only means of connecting online. Video can actually be a perfect next step, just because you can’t skim through video. The medium kind of forces you to concentrate.
It’s funny that that used to be one of the reasons why I almost totally ignored the idea of video blogging, and now I see it as one of the biggest pros for the format. I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with — and maybe I’ll post some video some day too :)
@Danny: Thanks for making my point even clearer! Yes, I’m sure our market is smaller than the mass market looking for quick fixes. But it’s probably big enough because posting less gives us time to focus on both the quality of the content we put out and the quality of communication (Although I haven’t done a good job in that lately). Like Seth Godin says, 1,000 real fans is enough. And if you do something remarkable, you will in the end be able to find those 1,000 people.
@Jess: I’m here! Sorry for disappearing. I promise to try not to do it again :)