A Blog Around The Clock

Slate has this good article with the same title (yes, read it if you are interested in becoming or becoming a better blogger). I agree with everything in it, except for one piece of advice that I often see bandied about but think is totally wrong:

Don't be too wordy. HuffPo says that 800 words is the outer-length limit for a blog post; anything longer will turn people off.

No. No. No.

This feeds nicely in what Ezra Klein wrote about it:

The specialized posts mix with the generalized posts -- in my case, health wonkery rubs elbows with garden variety political punditry -- and the two cross-subsidize each other. The rigor of the more technical work gives you credibility in the reader's mind and adds weight to the generalist posts. The generalist posts broaden the blog's potential audience and create access points that new readers wouldn't have if you let the blog become a repository of technical commentary.

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One sidenote here is that I find the question of "specialization" is interesting. Health care is not the thing I write the most about: Somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent of my posts are health care related. During periods of political drama, that number drops further. Far more of my posts are on the Obama administration, and politics more generally. But people define blogs by what they produce that's different from their competitors, not by what they offer that's the same.

This is excellent advice - blog about everything that strikes your fancy, but also sometimes blog about your area of expertise. Mix it up, topic-wise, but also mix-it up format-wise: videos, pictures, one-liners, linkfest, short posts and, YES, long essays, especially in your area of expertise.

If you write a long essay in your area of expertise, people WILL read. Why? Because your blog post is likely to contain information they can not find anywhere else on the Web, let alone in the media.

So, even if you mostly post a bunch of quick-and-dirty posts on various topics, when you have something special to say, don't be afraid to write 2000 or 3000 or 4000 or 5000 words. People will read that. And bookmark it. And put it on social networks. And e-mail it to friends. And discuss it in the comments. And respond to them on their own blogs. Those posts are the real gems of the blogosphere.

And how do you become an expert on a topic? You could go the usual way, through school or practice. But you can also become an expert if you constantly blog about something over the years. You dig through the literature, you read other bloggers who write about it, you get corrected by commenters, and soon become a knowledgeable and respected authority. You may still know less (but not always) than a person who got a PhD in the topic, but you will certainly know more than a journalist who writes on that topic because the editor said so - because you write, and thus learn, with passion.