Most, if not all, web designers know the notoriously popular site Smashing Magazine as well as its newly built network, the Smashing Network. Now, what made Smashing Magazine one of the most popular web design related sites out there is the great use, and even a bit of abuse, of the “listicles”, the list posts concept. They have not been the inventors of this concept but sure turned it into the trend it now is (in the web design world).

Trending and whoring.

Some brief Internet history. Once the Smashing Magazine concept took up and proved to be efficient and overtly performing (in terms of traffic hence in terms of revenue on advertisement), hundreds of clones started sprouting all over the place and, let’s admit it, started performing well too. The trend was on and the trend whores have been running around since then consuming, copying, listing, writing, “yes-manning”, “great listing” the content and the concept.

What goes up…

The major problem in all this ran around two major drawbacks.

First one, the popularity of such posts and the traffic generated has brought round a huge amount of link addicts. These are the people leaving two words to two lines comments on the posts, usually positive “great article” comments, just for the sake of putting a link to their own website either to catch link juice or to drive traffic elsewhere. This stiffled discussion and did not add value to the original article.

The other problem was that, at some given point, the whole thing started getting a bit cranky. Some of the lists posts were really light, no analysis whatsoever, just lists of, say, screenshots. I’m not a lists fan but I do read some of Smashing Magazine’s articles and some were really, really shallow. Worse, the other copying trend whores were publishing even shallower posts (I might even have one around in my own archives when I was testing what type of posts I would be publishing).

Setting the record straight.

I can’t say that it started out from there but Paul Scrivens at Drawar went back on how he launched Whitespace and how the concept caught up to be eventually made popular by Smashing Magazine. In this article, Smashing Magazine Killed The Community (Or Maybe It Was Me), Paul explains how this concept slowly started breaking up the web design community. What I found great in it is the mature response of Vitaly Friedman, Smashing Magazine’s CEO, who stated that there were changes coming on the site.

Last month, in the opinion section of Smashing Magazine, Kari Patila restressed the point on the trends that are driving web design today, trends that seem to be depreciating the community.

Changes at Smashing Magazine.

Great changes are those that are not those that jump out at first sight but do great things. Has anyone noticed that the number of comments on the latest Smashing Magazine articles have suddenly fell from the usual 300+ comments (mostly “great posts” ones) to under a 100 mostly well discussed ones? Yes there are changes there.

The team at Smashing Magazine must have analysed of what was polluting the articles and have made 2 major changes. They have been promoting more content oriented articles while keeping some great well-written list posts but the best move I think is the pure and simple removal of comment authors’ website link in the comments. This gave no more incentive to link addicts.

Preparation is the key to success on a blog. Before launching a blog, one has to sit down and think about all the necessary steps to building one’s blog: niche, domain name, strategy, SEO, networking etc. With time and the growing experience on blogging and community building one can now have all the tools for launching a full-fledged successful blog from day one. Pro tips sites are now budding over the web such as Sam’s Web Guide and Icy Tips. One of the topmost tips is to be prepared and, in this field, having a well prepared number of posts even before launching a website is a win win strategy.

After the launch.

I’ve been blogging for nearly 6 years now starting from a daily nonsense life blog on Blogger back in 2004. There was no real direction to that blog and it mixed work and daily life. I must say that life blogging was easy as I chatted away on anything going from my impressions on the way people made extensive use of tramways in Grenoble to my own personal discoveries in the art of Web Designing. Things changed when I started the Web Design Bureau of Mauritius some 2 years ago.

At that time there were lots of pro-blogging websites but I was not prepared as I would have been today. I made the mistake of not planning which explains the difficulties in publishing posts during the first months of this site’s existence. Then, ideas came and I took the pace. But one thing remains difficult to me: taking enough advance on posts to be published. I do spend quality time on the job done here and am a normally well organised person but constant upriver preparation is still not perfect on this blog.

Blogging burnout!

One of the worse things that can happen is blogging burnout. It is not the common “writer’s block”. It is real burnout. This usually happens when one tackles a field that one is unacquainted to or that one doesn’t really master. It can also sprout when too much energy has been put in the launching and preparation of a new blog project and then the whole thing is burnt out because all the subjects or the best subjects have been dealt with. Then, it becomes a real ordeal to manage the whole thing.

Some mistakes I made before.

Getting over excited over the number of posts – When I was a budding blogger, I got really excited over publishing more and more. Each time I had an idea I jumped on my computer and typed my way through my post. I was happy with the job and excited about the ideas I was coming up to. The problem was that, after a while, all the ideas looked bland. Why? Because I was in a certain mood at one time and the posts would have a certain feel and that feel would be here for 5 or 6 posts then change on the following ones. This translated a lack of consistency but, hey, those were the origins of the life blogs where you showed your mood.

Publishing too fast – Publishing too fast was a by-product of my blogging excitement. When you start out writing a lot of posts, you are eager to get a readership and collect the comments on your views. The major problem in that is that you have to refrain yourself from publishing it all. Some days I would be publishing the whole 5-10 posts I would have written in one day. What a waste! It was like eating a whole week’s food on Monday and eating nothing else during the week. Then what? BURNOUT! (short lapse but still…)

This also had the drawback of not giving enough strength to each post. Large traffic websites can go about publishing several posts a day but on smaller sites, this boils down the impact of each post and idea.

Writing long posts – Writing long posts is an art in itself. I happen to be a talkative person and found out you have to master the art of long posts before actually writing them. Readers’ attention-span is short, especially over the web. It doesn’t help to beat around the bush when there’s not reason for it. So keep the posts short until you get enough stamina to run the distance.

I have to admit that I have been blogging for over 6 years now. I’ve had different types of blogs, mainly “life blogs“. Today, I maintain only this one. It’s not that the other blogs were not successful, they actually bore more traffic than the current blog, but as life blogging goes, too much information on oneself can be bad for the reputation. However, 2010 and especially the new version of WordPress are here to change the way I’m blogging on this site.

I never had real trouble in generating content. This blog’s main aim is to educate people on web design in Mauritius, so it’s never been aiming to become a high traffic one but I do take very minute care of it. Until now I had much problems in working in advance. Defining the editorial line was a day to day job. I read a lot on how to improve my blogging style mainly with great sites such as Nicholas Chardot’s sitesketch101. Though I won’t be doing all he recommends (e.g: I prefer generating content based posts rather than list posts), his idea-mapping techniques and tips to connect with visitors are great.

The greatest help I got though, and I’m currently testing it, actually comes from the WordPress core. I’ve been a WordPress user for more than 5 years now and one thing that always frustrated me was the use of scheduled posts. Over the past years, this option just ended with “missed schedule” errors such that I ended up not using it anymore. Then, surprise, this new version has this error corrected. And here it is. The mini-blogging part of this blog is now in full swing. The posts are written with practically a week’s advance and are published daily at 8 am (French time). Thanks to this new version, the way I blog is changing and I hope to reach new heights now.

The Mauritian blogosphere has taken the rise. The eldest bloggers have been active for nearly a decade now. Mauritian blogs are listed on the Mauritius Blog List and Island Website and debates are hot on the past, present and future of blogs, be they on independent hosting or on blogging platforms. Some blogs are visitor baits and others are in niches. Yashvin and Ludovic have been interviewed quite often in the Mauritian press.

And then comes this article on L’Express. Huge publicity for Over Blog, a free French blog platform. The objective (improving the knowledge of blogs in Mauritius) is very commendable but the tone and the choice of words is not really that engaging. Even if the author points out the fact that blogging is not new, the whole tone runs like… “go on people, this is the new craze, open up a blog on Over Blog”. Does that author know that there are hundreds of platforms and that with a WordPress MU platform, any site can become a hoster (e.g: Le Monde)?

Another thing is that the author qualifies the blog as a way to express oneself without having to wait for a comment publication in the press or online. This gives the idea that a blog is like a blank page where you say one thing and go away. This also shows complete oblivion. No information on the way the web works, the communication levers to use to get a blog running and have visitors. The building processes. Say something on your blog but if you do not know how to promote your content and are not ready to fill up the space nearly everyday, it’s no use.

Worse. Let me quote this part:

Si la communauté des internautes apprécient ces opinions directes et sans complaisance, de nombreux journalistes et éditorialistes ont décrié la manière non professionnelle de donner des éléments d’informations pas toujours contre-vérifiés contrairement à la presse traditionnelle*.

As said earlier, having an article on blogs is commendable but the author should have dug a little more in the blogging world and analysed the life and actions of bloggers, especially Mauritian ones, before publishing such a shallow article on blogs.

*If the community of users appreciate these direct and uncompromising opinions, many journalists and columnists have stated the unprofessional manner of providing information not always cross-checked unlike the traditional press.

We are currently in the whole “new year resolution” hype all over the place. People around us, and maybe even you dear reader, are telling everybody around that they/you have made the decision of doing this or that for this new year. All in all, it is a great idea to say all this, the prospect of success, the freshness of it all is like a backfire thrusting you forward in your new resolutions for… 3 weeks!

Problem.

There must be a problem for all those good resolutions to go down the drain. Each year we just list a whole bunch of enthusiastic goals that we drop over some weeks later. As a matter of fact, these are the same things that happen in the blogging world. People start out with an idea for a blog, get excited by the prospect, see how it works or not and drop the whole thing some weeks later. Priscus dealt a lot with the phenomenon on her blog.

What is going wrong?

Just like “new year resolutions” blogging is subject to some #epic #failure reasons that mix, mingle and mess everything.

• Too many things in one go. Too many resolutions = too many parameters, topics or possible roads to follow.
• Too much enthusiam in the beginning with a boost of energy which runs out quickly.
• Sometimes, the blogger forces him/herself in the task. Bad, very bad. This is how you get disgusted with the whole thing. Not enjoyable.
• The vagueness of it all. Resolution: lose 20 pounds. Great but there’s nothing that says how and through what steps.
• Life interferes. In the same way that your everyday life will get in the way of allowing you to focus all the time on your resolutions, it interferes in your blogging pattern, be prepared to it.
• Difficulty. Sometimes one tackles a really difficult resolution and find oneself facing a wall. This is intimidating and the whole thing is dropped

Solutions.

The analogy is quite clear here. So what can be done?

• Tackle one topic and stick to it and only to this one for some time (like: every for a month) before integrating a new one and stick to both and so on.
• Keep the juice flowing. Do not overdo things. 200 word posts are enough to begin with.
• Enjoy doing it. This is the core of the chore. Find a topic that fires your passion, this is the only way of doing it.
• You want to achieve something, draw your roadmap. Plan the job. Determine your publishing regimen. Be consistent in it.
• Don’t let yourself get unbalanced by the various unexpected elements of everyday life. Its not dramatic if you can’t post everyday but you need to get back on your feet and carry on posting. By the way, never post apologies (“sorry for not having posted for so long”), readers hate whingerers.
• Avoid the intimidating element. Start out with easy steps. As one masters one’s field, why not start by the beginning. Some introductory posts are easy to start with.