There’s plenty of churn online about long vs. short posts for blogs. Yes, you should understand what your audience can handle, and yes it’s probably better to provide a mix of long and short.

But to me that isn’t the issue.

One thing that sets articles apart from blog posts is the invitation to communicate and collaborate with people. Articles don’t invite that. If it’s important to you to create a space for dialog based on your work then I highly suggest you stick with the blog. But if that doesn’t matter to you (and it’s very okay if it doesn’t) you might want to switch to a broadcast only style.

Whether you sell your articles of not is another thing.

Look at 37signals. The guts of their Getting Real book is their blog posts over the years. And look how well they were able to parley that into sellable material.

I’ve had similar questions as you. And even when I don’t get a lot of comments on the things I write I’d still rather live in a space that provides the opportunity for conversation and debate. But that’s me.

So I decided to give business people and non-usability-conscious designers some web advice, and, without my realizing it, my blog ended up being a collection of rather long articles instead of dynamic, shorter posts.

I read them now and I still think they do add value, but I no longer call this site my blog, because I feel it doesn’t qualify. Should I just take it offline and sell the articles? I really want to provide useful content, but I wonder if online articles are the right medium.

The Nielsen article made me question this because I realize now that I never really blogged in the first place.

I welcome your advice!

Thanks,

Eve

I 100% agree. Those graphs were CRAP.

‘Nuff said.

~ John

“And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.”

Sorry, couldn’t resist. :)

I’m not surprised by Nielsen’s polemic wrt blogging. I went to the NN/G Usability Conference last November in London; in the B2B Websites session (led by Hoa Loranger and Chris Nodder), someone asked “what about blogging?” The reply: “I wouldn’t bother unless you’re already in that market/space”. I had to make a dash, or else I would have challenged that piece of advice.

There’s a culture clash between digital immigrants like Nielsen and those (younger than I) who are growing up with this stuff. It’s Enterprisey vs Enterprise 2.0.

As an addition to Abi’s comment, I’ve done the same for my wife - she’s now one of just two HR bloggers we can find in Australia. She’s adding value and contributing to the conversation.

If you really want to be an expert in your field you better get your ass in gear and work even harder than you are now. You need to be blogging, podcasting, writing for-sale-only reports, writing books, speaking at conferences, organizing your own conferences, blogging and providing for-sale-only video of those conferences.

This is why I bought my fiance a domain name and hosting for his birthday. I think that he’s finally seen enough economics blogs that he realizes they’re a great way to promote yourself alongside your hardcore research. And they’re a great way to promote your research by tying it to the latest news, no matter what your industry.

It really bothers me when anyone tries to tell me the ONE way to do anything. There are just as many ways to build a productive and informative weblog as there are people on this planet.

Jakob Nielsen cannot be an expert in blogging because it is such a varied art. It’s like being an expert in oil canvases.