Philipp Lenssen
“You have to work on your blog for some time and
maintain your passion before it turns into anything.”
Philipp Lenssen created Google Blogoscoped for what is probably the best reason anyone can create a blog: because it didn’t exist. This is the reason many authors write books—because the authors feel the books ought to exist. There was certainly a need for Lenssen’s Google blog. Google and search engines in general are such a huge topic that few are willing to take on the http://blogoscoped.com subject—and few among those are able to maintain consistency and quality in their blogs.
Lenssen has experimented with a variety of blogs since 2003, including a contemporary telling of Goethe’s 1774 volume, The Sorrows of Young Werther. In much the same manner that American author Jane Smiley created her bestseller A Thousand Acres out of King Lear, Lenssen took the Goethe tale and set it in a contemporary city, with contemporary characters and language. That, of course, had limited readership, as did Lenssen’s ChoiceBlogger (http;//choiceblogger.com), in which he allowed readers to tell him what to blog about for one-month periods. A blog about bad customer service in shops and restaurants did somewhat better.
For Philipp Lenssen, blogging is a means of communicating ideas and sharing information. Focusing on increasing readership, he feels, distracts from the blogger’s primary mission of communicating and sometimes even collaborating with the reader. Hence, much of what can be extracted from his interview involves concentrating on your readers. Here are the highlights:
Google Blogoscoped
“You have to work on your blog for some time and
maintain your passion before it turns into anything.”
Philipp Lenssen created Google Blogoscoped for what is probably the best reason anyone can create a blog: because it didn’t exist. This is the reason many authors write books—because the authors feel the books ought to exist. There was certainly a need for Lenssen’s Google blog. Google and search engines in general are such a huge topic that few are willing to take on the http://blogoscoped.com subject—and few among those are able to maintain consistency and quality in their blogs.
Lenssen has experimented with a variety of blogs since 2003, including a contemporary telling of Goethe’s 1774 volume, The Sorrows of Young Werther. In much the same manner that American author Jane Smiley created her bestseller A Thousand Acres out of King Lear, Lenssen took the Goethe tale and set it in a contemporary city, with contemporary characters and language. That, of course, had limited readership, as did Lenssen’s ChoiceBlogger (http;//choiceblogger.com), in which he allowed readers to tell him what to blog about for one-month periods. A blog about bad customer service in shops and restaurants did somewhat better.
For Philipp Lenssen, blogging is a means of communicating ideas and sharing information. Focusing on increasing readership, he feels, distracts from the blogger’s primary mission of communicating and sometimes even collaborating with the reader. Hence, much of what can be extracted from his interview involves concentrating on your readers. Here are the highlights:
- If you can’t find a blog that covers a given subject, or the subject is not covered enough by existing blogs, create your own blog on that subject.
- Make your website and blog accessible by using only standard HTML.
- Clear, sensible titles make it easier for readers to scan your content— and more likely to return to scan (and read) again.
- Illustrations in posts increase the appeal of a blog’s page, while conveying lots of information in an instant.
- Experimenting with blogs on various subjects can provide a positive learning experience.
- Blogging with a narrow focus is accompanied by challenges in finding new perspectives and new things to write about. The challenges can be overcome by bringing in other bloggers to help.
- Rather than focusing on increasing traffic, let content guide your blog. Think about what’s interesting to you and others, what topics deserve coverage, and areas you want to see progress.
- The best way to improve your blog is to listen to your readers, and think about them before and as you write.