Just trying to keep our customers satisfied
The blog kingdom was pretty much terra incognita to me until about a month ago when I started “But this is Chico, too” to enlarge on topics I cover in my Enterprise-Record column “But this is Chico.” I’m learning that blogging isn’t the same as writing a column.
Last week, about 20 writers and editors at the newspaper went to a conference to learn about ways to improve our Web site. Most of us are just getting our feet wet. Few of us are adept enough to claim we have developed “Webbed” feet.
MediaNews Group, our parent company, estimates that within 10 years more of our customers will be accessing our newspapers’ Web sites than reading our printed editions. That’s a sea change. It means we have just a little bit of time to test the waters before we take a headlong plunge into the online world.
One of the topics at the conference was blogging. I learned, much to my chagrin, that bloggers can’t make an appearance once a week the way columnists do in newspapers. The blogging community will drop you like so much dead weight if you don’t “update” every day, or every other day at the most.
That sounds like a lot of work. But that’s part of what’s tripping me up. I’m supposed to be having fun doing this. I kinda sorta grasp the concept. (I learned bloggers can be loose with the language and say things like “kinda sorta”) I like to write. I even write when I’m not working, so I guess you could say that writing is also my hobby, but I spend a lot of time fretting over everything that goes on a page Writing is a labor of love, but it’s not a frivolous enough activity for me to think of it as fun. I’ll have to work on that — I mean, I’ll have to play around with that.
The blog experts at the conference urged us to make our entries “short but punchy.” So let me make my point right now so I can wrap this up.
Be patient with me. I won’t be able write every day, even if I learn to think of blogging as more fun than work, but I promise I’ll write more than once a week. If I don’t spend a certain amount of time away from my computer, I will lose the knack of doing other things, such as using my legs and having live conversations. I hope the blogging community is all right with that.
OK, now that I’ve made my point, it’s time to close. This entry is already too long.