I haven’t been at this blogging thing an extremely long time, and I certainly haven’t been as consistent as I’ve wanted to (working hard on this though – at least one post a week!). There is no getting around it – blogging is time consuming. Especially technical blogging. My first few posts were fairly long, lots of screenshots, very detailed. I think these posts are certainly useful, and I know that when I’m looking for a solution and find a well thought out, 1000 + word post on something, it’s great. Not every post has to be that way though.
“Real Artists Ship”
These three little words originally spoken by Steve Jobs, and then expanded on by Seth Godin in his book ‘The Linchpin’, are constantly in the back of my head when I’m writing. In a nutshell, Seth advocates that successful artists figure out a way to get things out the door and into the hands of consumers. When I find myself saying things like “well, I could probably expand on this further”, I remember these three words. Everything can be expanded on more. If you’ve gotten the main point across, save the expansion for another post. You can then link back to your original post when you do expand on the topic. It’s like your first post had a baby. It’s beautiful.
The Revision Counter Can Help
To keep myself on track and to prevent myself from obsessively previewing my post after every sentence, I keep an eye on the revision counter within WordPress. It will depend on the type of post of course, but once you figure out a rough baseline for each type of post you write, use it to keep yourself shipping. Spelling and grammar of course should always be corrected, but if you’re constantly adding and tweaking the technical content of your post, at a certain point it can prevent you from publishing on a regular basis.
People are busy, and sometimes the quicker but informative posts can help others and build your brand as well as the long ones. Just keep writing.
