Usability expert Jakob Nielsen says write articles, not blog entries

Writing in his latest Alertbox column, Jakob Nielsen says:

"Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's comments. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value."

- Jakob Nielsen (July 9, 2007)

Hmmm... yes and no. Blog entries don't all have to be like this one.

The best blogging strategy (the one that reaps the most rewards as far as establishing yourself as a thought leader) is to mix up your blog posts. Some should be short and reference another article / site / blog.

Others should be longer. Call them blog essays, call them articles. They'll be more "findable" by Google by virtue of being posted to a blog. And what about the great feedback you get from readers on a blog?

Be sure to read Nielsen's loooong article (complete with histograms and a chart). It's provocative: Write Articles, Not Blog Postings. He gets into paid vs. free content and makes the point that you shouldn't care about 90 percent of your readers anyway because they'll never buy anything from you. Yup, that's probably true.

Thanks to Jon Greer for the pointer.

Useful Link

See Robert Scoble's post about Nielsen's column (and the 89 comments in response) 

Comments

[Syamant Sandhir]

Hi Debbie, This is an interesting debate.

I've read Mr Neilsen in this posting and his book on usability and I've read your book and your blog. To me, both are experts whose thoughts on, topics of interest I've explored.

I'm tending to agree with your thought on mixing up posts. My reasons for this are

1. For a service organisation like ours, the services that one offers are finite.

2. One can address aspects of one's business in longer posts/articles etc. These could come with considerable inputs and expertise. No doubt the value of this would be immense to an interested person. The time taken to write such a topic would be considerable as well and there will be fewer articles in a given time period.
I am working on such a topic called Why is the Ceo not satisfied.

3. The key point I want to highlight is that a blog allows one to highlight nuances or insights that one gets during the course of one's work. Today's environment is a rapidly changing and growing environment, building on these nuances may help us or our clients or any person who may apply it as their Eureka insight . This person may not be interested in the service of the company at this moment in time. Who knows this person may refer it to someone else or come back at another time.

4. Such nuggest or nuances can be many and lead to more rapid posting on a blog.

5. Sharing of knowledge is good and I've learnt extensively from a lot of blogs and experts over a period of time.

What do you think ?

[Eric Eggertson]

Since almost everything Neilsen writes is uber linkbait, it's interesting that he turns his nose up at blog-like behaviour. He turns being a contrarian into an artform.

However, when you're a serial contrarian, sometimes you're going to argue against a practice that works just fine.