Blogging: The first 9 months

My blog has been in action for about 9 months now. In that time, and over 4100 views later, much has been learnt about how to write for a blog, about understanding regional differences in writing style, and about what topics have been the most interesting from the perspective of this particular blog.

While there is still much to learn - never mind that some suggest that the end of blogging is nigh - here are a few observations based on the statistics generally available to the owner of a blog, such as how readers found your blog or articles, geographical distribution and more:

• It's been quite a challenge finding a balance between what I perceive to be the American style versus the European style, where the former seems quite high on self-promotion (everybody seems to be an expert), whereas the European way seems more conservative. As most readers of my blog are by far from North America (the USA and Canada, where the latter seems for conservative than the former), I have experimented with both styles to varying degrees to try and understand how people perceive the different styles, and have concluded that certainly no single writing style will please everyone. With that experiment over, it's best to write in a style that you're comfortable with, with the style chosen being driven by the topic you are writing about. On cultural differences, I have also found a big difference in interpretation about a simple term like "financial services"! You will learn a lot about cultural differences in how ideas are expressed as you write your blog!
• Another word in terms of style: While some cultures may have no issue with being direct in terms of feedback on issues of the day or on issues that impact them, others are a lot more indirect. For example, Dutch feedback may tend to be very direct - "It's crap!", whereas English feedback may be a lot more indirect - "Well, it's ok." When in doubt, go ahead and apply conservatism to your style, but not so much so that your message is lost.
• The most read articles on my blog have concerned marketing, whether about CRM or about the various types of marketing equity. The two articles on cycling have been very popular too, with the one on Paris-Brest-Paris, being found mainly by internet links and search engines, not only being the most read article, but also attracting the most reader comments so far. The other article on similarities between endurance sports and business was also one of the most highly read articles, suggesting perhaps that comparisons might be a good writing style to experiment further with.
• I have also spent some time reflecting on the different frames of reference readers may use, and as a result, some articles were written from a more sensory perspective, while others were written from a more fact-based perspective. Certainly the fact based articles have been most successful from a search engine keyword perspective.

Much of the reason for why your blog exists will also determine how you write, and what you write about. In some ways, my blog has been a journal of sorts, focusing on aspects you may encounter during the course of business, and in others, as a point of reference for marketing insight.

Ultimately, your readers decide the value of your blog, and by examining which articles attract the most attention, it is up to the author to make the right decisions on future writing dependent on that feedback.