No secret formula

Rarely a day goes by where someone in the blogosphere doesn't offer advice on how to write a great blog post. Yesterday, I ran across two (at least). Here they are:

1. Johnnie Moore and Robert Paterson have an interesting experiment on the go over at The 'Phoric... essentially, guests are asked to pick three YouTube videos and talk about what it is about them that they find interesting / exciting. Their latest 'Phoric is with Euan Semple. Towards the end of the abridged version, Johnnie references an earlier part of the conversation saying:

"Anyone who blogs will relate to the experience of writing a masterful post, the fruits of many hours labour, and waiting for flood of comments and trackbacks (and) getting absolutely none. And then, some throwaway post about some inconsequential event generates a firestorm of interest."

The message here is, of course, don't be too clever by half and over think this... just write, you never know what people will find interesting.

2. James Chartrand wrote a post over at Copyblogger entitled The Secret Key to Killer Content: Taking Time to Think.

The message here is also quite simple... if you want great posts, take the time to think. This stuff doesn't write itself, so take the time and do it right.

My point is that I guess there isn't a secret formula to success in social media. Some folks would say that if you don't enable comments on your blog, then it isn't really a blog. But... it has worked out pretty well for Seth. All of this to say that I think it's best if you simply experiment a bit, see what works and feels right for you, and go from there.

What are your thoughts?

Comments

[James Chartrand - Men with Pens]

Thanks for the linkout, and I'm glad you liked the post. Feel free to drop by at my regular home at Men with Pens (dot ca!)

[Mark Dykeman]

It seems to me that one of the keys to writing a successful post is to either make it so informative that it can't help but be useful

or

Fill it with personality and life.

Both would be great. Both can take time to do properly.