I decided last night to put an end to the all question-and-answer format I have been experimenting with since the beginning of the year. For new readers, the idea was that I would write the title of each post as a question that the post would then answer.
My reasons for taking the approach were:
1. It was something different and might be a way to reinvent my blog a bit.
2. People have always enjoyed my “By Request” days where I answer questions.
3. Mainly, though, I thought it might be a way to help me write blog posts more quickly and easily.
After almost two months, I had drawn a few conclusions:
1. It wasn’t making it easier and quicker to writer blog posts. In fact, in some cases, I spent more time working on the question than the answer (I’m kidding), and some posts didn’t lend themselves to the Q & A format or resulted in awkward questions.
2. I did not get a lot of feedback on the new format and what I did was from people who questioned the approach I was taking or liked the old way better.
3. I noticed some interesting, slightly negative results in Google search rankings that might be attributed to the use of questions in the post titles.
In other words, I was beginning to shrug my shoulders whenever I thought about the approach. It wasn’t a negative experience, but it wasn’t a positive experience either.
Last night, some of the smartest bloggers I know told me it was time to abandon the approach. That confirmed my thinking.
I decided that since it’s my blog, I can do whatever I want, including changing my mind.
So, I’m dropping the all Q & A approach, although I still do the occasional “By Request” days and use a question as a post title from time to time.
Blogging is about experimenting. Some experiments work really well and some not so well. Those are the easy experiments to evaluate. It’s the ones that end up in the middle that are hardest to decide what to do with.
So, I’m thinking up a new experiment. Anonymous blogging has been done to death and probably won’t work for me (see the title of this blog). I’ve seen pictures of me appearing on various blogs lately and I’m intrigued by the idea of doing graphics and pictures on my blog.
By the way, of the recent pictures of me from BlawgThink, I greatly prefer the one here to the one here (from the fun-loving bloggers at RethinkIP).
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http//www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
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