Usability ‘guru’ Jakob Nielsen has written a blog post article on his blog news section entitled Write Articles, Not Blog Posts. Essentially he argues that businesses should not ‘waste’ their time writing short blog posts, but should instead invest time in creating high quality content (i.e. long articles).
There’s a good discussion over on the Guardian Technology Blog, much of which I agree with. Especially those who suggest that Nielsen doesn’t understand blogging (it doesn’t have to be short or worthless) and is simply piggy-backing his (generally deserved) reputation to give credence to an otherwise shaky premise.
To summarise:
- Blog posts don’t have to be short – but the best ones often are (for reasons that Nielsen should be familiar with)
- All content should be valuable – but quantity doesn’t equal quality (as Nielsen’s rambling article proves)
- Blogs can provide absolute demonstrable business value – just ask Robert Scoble, Hugh MacLeod or Rand Fishkin
Do you think that was too long?
