You’re NOT Only As Good As Your Last Blog Post

You’re NOT Only As Good As Your Last Blog Post

I’m not sure if I’m spoiling the illusion for you, but stand-up comedians don’t write new jokes for every performance. In fact, most rarely update their acts much at all over the course of a year. Sure, we’ll tweak and tinker with a few things, yet fresh brand spanking new material is kind of a “zen” experience that doesn’t happen too often.

Maybe a comic will come out with 10 solid polished minutes of laughs after a year of hard work testing it on stage. (writers like Louis C.K. who can churn out a full hour in this time frame are the very rare exceptions)

When you see an unknown, but professional comedian at a local comedy club, you’re likely getting the “best of” medley of his entire career. Unless you happen to have stumbled upon clips on the internet or have seen him before, you don’t really know when that hilarious joke you just laughed at was written, do you?

It could have been something he jotted down on a cocktail napkin just the night before. It could have been something honed, tested and perfected almost 15 years ago. As an audience member, there’s really no way of knowing for sure.

But does it even matter?

‘New’ and ‘latest’ are always relative terms.

As a comedian, why on earth would I ever choose not to do my very best on stage? Imagine if I walked in front of the microphone and told people “this is just the latest 45 minutes of material I’ve written, let’s see how it turns out!” Do you think that would play over very well? Of course it wouldn’t. The audience doesn’t care when I wrote my material. As long as it’s relevant and new to them, that’s all that’s required.

Yes, getting rid of that bit about the Monica Lewinsky scandal would likely be prudent.
Yes, retiring that two-minute chunk about the “Where’s the beef?” commercial is more than a good idea.
But, leading your comedy set with a general ‘driving in traffic’ joke – why not, even if you wrote it 12 years ago?

Are we structuring our blogs to showcase the ‘latest’ and not the ‘greatest’?

Back in the day, when blogs were primarily used for personal online journaling, I can understand why they would be organized in a chronological fashion. The purpose was indeed to chronicle someone’s life, so without a time-based linear structure, it wouldn’t make much logical sense to readers. That type of endeavor was essentially a single person writing a “story” and blog posts were like new chapters of their life’s “book”.

But how many bloggers out there are using their platform like the good ol’ days? At least from the thousands of blogs I subscribe to or read every day, this number is very small. Most of them are writing and producing pillar resources as content marketing for a business. So why are they still stuck in the antiquated model of displaying posts from newest to oldest?

Maybe your 73rd post is the best sample of your writing. Maybe your 114th post is a great lead generation tool. Maybe that five-part series you did last year is a better resource that many paid products available on the market right now?

Yet barely anyone is looking at them.

They’re buried in your archives collecting dust. No matter how many times you interlink posts, display a “popular” post widget, create a showcase page and so forth, the most visible work on your blog will always be whatever the “latest” thing you’ve put there. It’s your own damn fault, though. You’re still stuck in the mindset that a “blog” somehow has been divinely ordained to be displayed in chronological order. Why is this so?

Wouldn’t you want your first impression to be the best you can possibly make it?

Tell me this right now: If you had the choice of what post you’d like them to read first – is it currently the first thing someone sees when hitting your root index page? Probably not, right? Then change that.

I’m not only as good as my last blog post and neither are you. Everything I produce on my blog adds to an overall body of work. Some posts are good. Some not so much. Some are downright amazing. Although I will be judged by all of my creation, I choose to lead with my brilliance, not with my filler.

Your blog isn’t just a series of 800 word writings in a hodgepodge order. But that’s what it looks like now.

Nor is a comedian’s act just a series of 30 second jokes told in order by date. But that’s what your blog is now.

What are you doing to change this perception? How are you giving your best work the spotlight it deserves?

I’ll give it a shot.

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  • matthewneedham
    You're absolutely right. Which I guess is why you've gone for removing the date. Brilliant idea. The truth is (wrongly) that many people don't look through the archives because they assume it to be outdated. When for much of my stuff, the reality is that it's as current today as it was 6 months ago. Tips on giving better presentations or more being more productive aren't time sensitive.

    PS. How do you get to disable the date?
  • Exactly, Matthew. Even I fall into the trap of not looking at archives for the same reason. Yet if it was presented to me in a logical way that was easy to use, I'd have no problem reading relevant content from 2-3 years back. That's why changing this perception with the actual blog design is paramount - so you can get readers out of this mindset.

    Disabling the date is easy in Wordpress... just delete the php tag for it in all your templates.
  • You have a valid point here, Jordan - and a fairly logical chain of arguments in support.

    I'm still debating with myself on whether this makes sense, especially since they go against conventional wisdom. Your statistics will certainly prove the point in a few weeks, and I am looking forward to them.

    One of the questions I haven't been able to answer is - why don't we see any of the ubiquitous themes supporting this? This sounds like common sense in hindsight (though uncommon), and I can't believe everyone else missed out on this over the last decade.

    Mike also had a pretty interesting point - there could be multiple "hooks" where this concept might be used - or might even be more successful.

    I did a write up on the entire shake up you, David, Mike and Nathan caused with this upheaval - with a bunch of other examples for all of us to review.

    Take a look at Social Media Notebook when you get a chance - I'd love to hear what you think.
  • Kapil, I think there are plenty of Wordpress themes that support this type of structure - and they're primarily used by stand-alone businesses, single product mini-sites, etc. (I believe the term for this type of design is "startup" looking)

    I'll go take a look at your post right... I definitely believe it'll be interesting to look at the stats a few months from now and see the results!
  • Hmmm .... so the question isn't much about Theme support, then.

    I'll just wait and see how it works out for you (and David, Nathan, Mike) before making a final call :)
  • Hey Jordan. Just found this post via David Risley commenting on it on his blog. I like the your insight. I'm always trying to find new ways to display my most pertinent and relevant content. I've never even bothered to create an 'archives' widget or whatever that infrastructure is because I figured - who's going to dig around looking for old posts - yet there could very well be gold in them thar hills!

    Anyway, interesting new approach to your blog (I'm guessing its new - you don't do dates anymore!). have you noticed more 'conversions' from your stuff as a result?
  • Thanks for the feedback, Don. It's actually way too early to really see how the conversion rate has changed since there's not much a statistical set to go on. It *has* improved dramatically though for list subscribers... as well as getting more eyeballs on my "pages" more than the blog posts themselves.

    Feel free to hit me up in a few weeks and I have no problem giving you the skinny on the stats!
  • The problem with a blog, or any kind of writing, is that we tend to post great stuff and then, in order to satisfy our regular readers desire to know we aren't dead, we post a bunch of filler content.

    Having a new person visiting our site becomes scary.

    We don't want new readers to land on our filler content yet. We want to hook them with the great content and then later let them suffer through the filler crap while they wait for some other brilliant insight.

    The problem with what you are suggesting though is that we also wouldn't want our regular readers to have to scroll to hell and back to find our latest filler content lest they think we have died and drop us from their RSS feed.

    I think the secret may be to have two blogs.

    Blog A would be our best posts for new readers.

    And Blog B would be for seasoned readers who are so burned out reading our great posts that they would find it refreshing to read our filler stuff.

    So we could have Notaproblog/funny-stuff-for-new-readers-only.com and Notaproblog/not-funny-or-insightful-filler-for-long-time-readers.com .

    Of course you would need to come up with a way to make sure that new readers didn't jump right to the filler stuff and that seasoned readers didn't try to sneak on to the new readers site. But then that's what lawyers are for I suppose.

    Anyways, interesting post (although as a seasoned reader I would have preferred filler content)
  • Yeah, One blog post does not maketh the blogger.

    It's about every single blog post, the good and the bad.

    I believe that the bad posts are a testimony to your character. It shows you're human, making mistakes. But learning from them as your next post is a killer.
    If every post was a killer we would wonder about which planet you're from
  • Robert, but why does it have to be this way when we have the power in our hands to display what we wish on our blogs? Sure, in the past, print media didn't have that luxury... so why in the digital age are we still abiding by the notion that once something is published, it has to stay as-is for the rest of time?
  • Jordan,

    Yes, when you put it that way it certainly makes sense.

    We could so easily go back and fix, edit, spice up old posts.

    Good point
  • I see no reason why we can't promote the absolute maximum out of our best posts. If I have a post that I want everybody to see but they might have missed originally, I'm going to tweet it out 5 times a day until all of my followers have read it (even the bots!) If people are using Twitter to market (and let's be honest, who isn't) then that's a fantastic opportunity to promote archived links and if that doesn't work, putting up a little widget/box somewhere on your site with a heading of "Best [Insert Blog Name] posts will be a sure-fire way to let your readers, new and old, find out about what an amazing blog post creator you are!
  • This was making some sense to me, but then doesn't it assume that people are coming into the site via the "home" page?

    I just checked and only 20% of my traffic comes into the site that way, presumably the rest are linking straight through to a post from search or other social media. Interestingly, the place they go next most often is the About page, so maybe that's where to showcase the amazing stuff.
  • Social media & search traffic are a bit of a different beast, as those visitors are coming for a very specific resource (a single blog post) - so throwing up a "showcase" in their face may not be the best since you're creating a barrier for them to get essentially what they wanted and expected. Add this to the face Twitter/Facebook traffic are typically returning visitors anyways, so the importance of a first impression with them is already moot.

    For these traffic sources, putting "related" stuff on the footer of posts and a big fat e-mail opt-in call to action would work just fine - and using an autoresponder series that highlights the "best of" your blog serves the purpose of showcasing your best work even to these visitors.

    With this attitude, I'm talking primarily about direct traffic methods and/or ones where you can indeed control the entry landing point of your visitors (like guest posts, back links, Twitter profile, etc.). Being that most will usually link to your root index URL, this page should really be the "head" of your content... where you can lead with your *best* stuff, provide a very clear singular call-to-action if possible, and give people a reason to subscribe, follow, etc.

    Basically, instead of using single blog posts as a conversion tool into a permission-based contact structure (RSS, Twitter, e-mail list, etc.) and throwing up so many options with links, banners, navigation, etc. while trying to do so (as we know, the more options you give, the more people will freeze up) - why not condense your design and focus on one call-to-action at a time?
  • Makes sense. I guess another option would be to have multiple landing pages "tuned" to where the incoming visitor is coming from.
  • However, we should take the comedy analogy a bit further, should we not?

    Once a comedian has built up a loyal audience his fans are going to be pretty hacked off if they spend $20 to go and watch him and get exactly the same set they spent $20 on three years ago. While your new fans are going to be happy and none-the-wiser, your loyal fans are going to seek pastures new.

    The answer is to find a way of delivering your best AND your freshest content to your fans so that new people see your best side and your old fans know that you can still innovate after all these years.
  • Gareth, you wouldn't believe how many comedians (with decent followings) do indeed perform virtually the same exact act as they did 3-4 years ago to the same audience. I see it here quite often with the "dinosaur" headliners who still have no problem doing dated OJ Simpson jokes & Jack Nicholson impressions. As I've seen, though, eventually less & less people come out to their shows year after year once they get the gist that they're likely to hear the same shit as before. Even so, they're still able to get regular work - as most audiences are stupid and/or couldn't remember the comedian's act anyways.

    But I do agree with you completely that the *combination* is the best way to effectively satisfy both newcomers and long-term readers. It doesn't have to be an either-or type of thing.
  • Fantastic advice, Jordan! One of those ideas that seems utterly self-evident when you put it like that...why DO we keep ourselves locked in the chronological mode of the diary, when blogs these days are so much more? I see a few people playing with it, but I'm sure there will be a whole slew of them in the very near future. ;)

    Loving the new look of the blog, btw.
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