"There is difference and there is power. And who holds the power decides the meaning of the difference." --June Jordan

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Two Things That Keep Me From Reading Your Blog

1.)If you post too often, I will likely unsubscribe. I like to be able to get through my entire feed-reader each day without leaving anything "unread", and it's hard to do that when ONE blog has posted 10, 20, or even 30 times.

Example: As much as I sometimes like Jezebel, they got axed from my Google Reader for precisely this reason.

Exceptions: The amazing Shakesville, which is stellar from post to post and has a perfect mix of commentary, anecdotes, YouTube fun, and open threads, and Queers United, which, despite posting several times a day, posts short and sweet commentary, news, and action alerts that I am sure to take the time to read.


2.) If your entire post does not appear in my feed-reader, I am unlikely to click over to read the rest of it. (In blogger, you can check or change this under the "Site Feed" tab in the "Settings" menu.) It's nothing personal, but unless I am so engrossed in your post from the title and first couple of sentences alone that I absolutely have to know what comes next, I am likely to just scroll on by it. And even if I DO click over to read it, I am annoyed that I had to open a new tab and wait for it to load.

In case you need more convincing to switch to displaying full posts in your feed, here's a scenario to think about. When I used to use my Google Reader as a way to allow me to read blog posts on a work computer in which nearly all blogs were blocked, having to click to a blog to read the post meant I had no way whatsoever to read it. I would sometimes try to mark the posts I wanted to come back to and read later at home, but it almost never happened.


What keeps you from reading blogs?

7 comments:

sally said...

Once a blog hasn't been updated in a few weeks, I get rid of it unless I REALLY love the blog and have been warned of said hiatus.

Tracey said...

Yeah, I almost mentioned the never updating thing, but since I rarely get around to cleaning out my reader, I don't really notice if someone hasn't updated until months later.

Anonymous said...

Great honest tips-and good to keep in mind if you want readers-which i think we all do:-) Thanks for linking my blog up! I'm going to update mine this week hopefully and I'll add yours as well.

Anonymous said...

I agree with #1. #2 doesn't bug me too much. One thing that definitely bugs me is if a multi-author blog doesn't list the author of each post in the line of the RSS feed that appears in the list in the blog reader. And what totally bugs me is blogs that put a "Read the rest of this post" linky in the RSS feed, but when you go there, there isn't anything more.

Tracey said...

Ooh, good ones, Physioprof! I totally agree with the blog author one. I think Pandagon has that problem? Or, they did a few months ago when I unsubscribed from them, at least.

habladora said...

That's funny, I disagree with you on both counts. I don't like when huge chunks of text show up in my reader - I'll always subscribe to summaries if given the choice. As far as posting frequency, as long as the posts are fairly good, keep 'em coming!

I really do hate it, though, when I click for more and... there isn't anything more. Teases.

Anonymous said...

I share your criteria, although I suppose the first one, for me, is partly a ratio of [things I want to read]:[things I don't care about]. If I'm likely to be interested in them, I'll skim them every week or so.

If I really like a blog, I'll leave it in my reader for a while to see if it gets updated again.