Write Quality Content or Trade for Popularity ?

May 6th, 2009 | 19 Comments

Whenever writing/blogging for a web design blog or any other blog, there are many techniques and ways to write. Some post generally favored by the readers and they get famous in the social media sites. As a result you get more traffic. Some bloggers are talented and they can write a quality post in 20 minutes , while some people might take hours or days. There are some posts that requires time and research. When you finish and publish this post, It does not get that much attention. On the contrary, article such as round ups might not require that much work, but it has slightly more chance for getting noted and popular.

What’s your motive when you are writing ? Quality or Popularity? Or both?

The reason behind writing this post is I am really puzzled by a recent post at CSSTricks from Chris Coyier. In that post Chris Interviews Soh Tanaka (Another brilliant Web designer). Chris’s advice to Soh was not to do roundup and write original post. That kind of got to me because I did some roundup as well and I look up to Chris’s works and writing for inspiration. Honestly, he has done some amazing works. I started to think what should new blogger like myself do? I started having doubts and questions about blogging.

I have seen Smashing Magazine or other popular web design blog doing round ups of resources. Many of theround up post gets the most digg or delicious bookmark as well. So, this is my quest to discover what kind writing is most preferred? Is doing a roundup a crime against quality post? Will people think less of you if you do roundup posts? Or can they both co-exist satisfying the readers?

What is Quality Content?

Usually these post contains detailed analysis, research and original post. For example here are 4 post that I think are very high standard and well-crafted.

8 Characteristics Of Successful User Interfaces Usabilitypost

Better User Orientation through Navigation- UX Booth

Design Processes & Why Every Designer Needs One – Positive Space Blog

The Freelancer’s Guide to Surviving the Economic Crisis- Colorburned

The reason these posts are have high quality because they are well researched, organized and explained. The are discussing different aspects and developmental in the field of web design and I think the authors are quite successful in explaining the topics they are writing about. However, how do did they on popularity scale? Not so well I believe.

Roundups? Should you do it?

The purpose of round up posts are they gathers the best resources about certain topics on the web. First lets look at some of best round up posts in terms of most digg, delicious and comments amount:

53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without Smashing Magazine

Delicous-21666
Digg-5469
Comments -1,018
39 Creative Lego Advertisements – Creativity without bricks – Specky Boy

Delicous-209
Digg-2534
Comments -55
33 Exceptional Logo Re branding In 2008 For Your Inspiration- Smashing Apps

Delicous-450
Digg-1284
Comments – Did not count

Here is why round up are popular:

People are lazy. If they can get all the resources in one page why should they Google for every single thing?
There quite easier write too (in some cases, you still have to search for the resources).
They are Scannable.
They have more to offer then any well written detailed post.

This does not mean that quality posts won’t be popular but as you can see they do not get popular in social media site. (Just to be clear, I am only talking web design blog)

What Should you do?

It is question of own ethics, principles and interest. If you are newbie web designers who is blogging you would probably tend to do roundups because round up article is a good place to start and you want more readers and traffic . Also, your skills are limited in terms of creating original post such as CSS menus, Jquery Gallery and so on. However, if you are experienced web designer you would want to write post that are useful to the readers and posts that reflects your style. But that’s just what I think. Everyone, has their own opinion about it. Be smart and decided whats best for you.

Why did I trouble to go through all this explaining? Probably because I am interested in hearing what other people has to say and understand more about blogging and writing good posts .

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Posted Under: Tips & Tools, Web design

Tagged: blogging, Web design, writing

http://www.buyapc.org/ Jeremy Ashburn

I really try to write content that is both quality and popular. My blog makes computer shopping recommendations; I’ve found that it seems to be better to write about systems that are the most popular on Newegg or Amazon. All my posts are original content in that I summarize what people like and don’t like about a particular PC or Laptop. Therefore you can easily get the big picture on the most popular systems out there.
.-= Jeremy Ashburn´s last blog : This Nettop works as a Great Home Theatre PC =-.
http://fearlessflyer.com michael soriano

I think both is fine as long as their good. The keyword here is Quality. Quality round ups are what gets bookmarked as well as Quality articles.

michael soriano’s last blog post..Create A Subscribe Bar with CSS Sprites
Kawsar Ali

@Heidi Cool: Thank you for your sharing your thoughts.
http://www.heidicool.com/blog/ Heidi Cool

I think both round-ups and original posts can be useful. I’ve been blogging about Web development for about 5 years now, and most of my posts are long original thoughts, but I also include links to 3-5 related articles on the bottom of my posts.

I like to write and often pick topics that require detailed examples or explanations, so this style is usually what works best for me and my readers.

In general though I think the format should be determined by the goal of the article. Some topics require more explanation while others can be better served with some introductory commentary followed by a collection of links that support the premise.

I often recommend the latter to new bloggers and those intimidated by the writing process. Many of these people are already spending time gathering resources or following news on their particular niche. For them it only takes a bit more effort to post those links and share their valuable finds with the world.

Heidi Cool’s last blog post..Say what you mean—don’t let jargon drive your visitors away.
http://www.uprinting.com/ UPrinting.com Printing Services

Roundups are fine, just as long as they are really useful. Like roundups of wonderful photoshop brushes, or design blogs, or stuff like that. Inspiring posts are always a delight to read. As well as well-researched and really thorough articles.
Kawsar Ali

@Raymond Selda: Thanks a bunch for shairng your comment. As you said, I agree too it all depends on your goals and what you are interested in.
http://www.raymondselda.com/ Raymond Selda

Updated comment. Please disregard my first comment. Thanks.

Thank you for bringing this up. It all depends on the goals of your website. If all you want is massive amounts of traffic to gain good advertisement rates, then you definitely need to do round-ups. But if you’re selling products through your website, you need to write quality articles to show your expertise in support of your products. Doing this will target a good chunk of your readership into buying your products. You need to think about what kind of customers you are trying to attract with your content because you cannot sell to all of them.

Keep in mind that even if you get huge traffic, it’s possible that you won’t get to sell anything especially if you don’t have the content to back it up. I noticed that there are sites that sell their own products but do not have any single advertisement on their site and vice versa.

To sum it all up, it really depends on your goals.
http://www.raymondselda.com/ Raymond Selda

Thank you for bringing this up. It all depends on the goals of your website. If all you want is massive amounts of traffic to gain good advertisement rates, then you definitely need to do round-ups. But if you’re selling products through your website, you need to write quality articles to show your expertise in support of your products. Doing this will target a good chunk of your readership into buying your products.

Keep in mind that even if you get huge traffic, it’s possible that you won’t get to sell anything especially if you don’t have the content to back it up. I noticed that there are sites that sells their own products but do not have any single advertisement on their site and vice versa.

To sum it all up, it really depends on your goals.
http://pelfusion.com PelFusion

yes i think you are right about roundups as such posts also get fast in search engines too
http://www.philsbury.co.uk Phil

Both have tremendous use in their own way. Concise roundups are great for finding tools and tips that others are using, especially on the web development front.
A clear, well structured article will be useful as long as it makes a point, even if it’s not one shared by the masses.
One key in any blog would be to know you’re audience. Envanto do it well by having lots of blogs, lots of original work, and the odd round up, so I guess it’s finding the right balance.

Phil’s last blog post..Simon Amstell at the Etcetera Theatre
Pingback: Write Quality Content Or Trade for Popularity? : Design Newz
Kawsar Ali

@Design-notes: @Elena: Thank you for comment. It is nice to hear what everyone else thinks
Pingback: CSS Brigit | Write Quality Content or Trade for Popularity
http://design-notes.info Design-notes

I think round up on inspiration,techniques and snippets are very welcomed. Its like one bookmark for 10, but for design tools and software, resource websites and frameworks, there are only very few good ones and those big design magazines know it.
They sometimes just do a very long list for the sake of popularity. Shouldn’t encourage them.

Also when they do roundups on snippets, they should be careful, sometimes the snippets dont work or too old, but they did not check

Design-notes’s last blog post..Excellent web design tools
Pingback: zabox.net
Pingback: Graphic Design Links and Tutorials
Pingback: vot.eti.me
Pingback: joyoge.com
http://tookooldoggies.blogspot.com Elena

I think both are good ways to write posts. They also serve different purposes. I am new to the web design industry. I’m still taking classes but I find these blogs so valuable.

I’ll sometimes read a post at a place like A List Apart, and I feel as if it’s as good as reading a chapter in a web design book. Still, I may be drained and just save it for reference.

Other times, I look at the best of posts if I’m looking for design resources. Yes, it does save time putting a bunch of links together as a roundup, but it’s still useful.

Not everyone blogs every day. Sometimes less is more. Personally, I pick quality over quantity every time.

What it comes down is what drives your desire to write. If a blogger write quality articles, readers will come to know and respect the writer for that.

Elena’s last blog post..If I Can’t Have a Dog…