Journalists have the admirable ability to churn out stories every day. While they may be writing a couple of stories for publication, they may also be working on others in the background for later publication. If you have a newspaper that only has one story, it is rarely worth stopping to pick up a copy of the newspaper. What gives the newspaper value is having a variety of articles every single day. The job requires quantity. But, they do not skip over quality. For this, they hire editors to help the journalist put out good, quality articles.
Too Much Effort
From my observation, the more successful bloggers, on Hive and on other platforms, have the tendency to write frequent posts, often daily. In my previous post, Overthinking Your Blog, I discuss how I have not been a good blogger as I have increasingly tried to focus too much on quality. In other words, it takes me too long to write a blog post. Consequently, I have to put off writing blog posts as I have other work that needs doing. The reason it takes so long is that I want to put as much thought into it as possible.
Each blog post, lately, takes some effort to find the right words, to structure, edit, and even rewrite. In other words, I'm trying to achieve the same quality that is expected of professional publications. But I have to remind myself that I don't get paid to go out and find stories. I don't have editors to review my work. And, more importantly, it's not like the topics I write about are going to be cited or scrutinized by others. For the most part, they'll be in the stream for seven days and then be forgotten.
Falling Into a Rut
One of the reasons I put so much effort into writing blog posts is that I tend to fall into a rut with my writing. I use the same phrases. It takes effort to go back and rewrite things with different words. I also want to avoid writing the same thing again the way that Grandpa or Grandma tell the same stories over and over. But I'm starting to rethink this.
There was a time that I would listen to talk radio daily. The shows would run two or three hours every day. As you can imagine, it probably takes the host a great deal of preparation and research to talk about things for a couple of hours every day. And, as you would expect, the hosts would repeat things. The circumstances would be different, but their opinion or analysis would come back to a few concepts that shape how they view the world. TV news also tends to be formulaic, and exhibits the same biases in all their stories.
I'm starting to think that maybe being unique in each blog post is not particularly worth the effort. I'm not saying I would write the same blog post each day. What I mean is that I could explore the same topic from different perspectives in each post. Or, maybe I develop certain . . . I don't know the words for it. It's like when you watch a Jason Statham movie. Each movie is a different character and different story, but you know what you can expect when you watch a Statham movie. Is it branding?
Perhaps it's consistency. The rut may not be a bad thing. If you know that when you read my blog post there will be certain things you expect me to write. For example, you expect Bill Maher to have a certain liberal viewpoint on his show. In this sense, readers can expect a particular viewpoint or certain themes in my writing. Perhaps it may put off some readers, but those readers who connect would be willing to come back for more. By making each post unique and too general, regular readers can't rely on enjoying each post.
A Focus on Quantity
Going back to my observations of more popular bloggers, they do tend to rehash things they have written about in the past. They often discuss new things that reinforce their previous ideas or thoughts. This brings the definition of "essay". Blog posts, when you come down to it, are a series of essays. An essay is defined as "an attempt, try, or effort". It's not necessary for the blog post, essay, to be authoritative. It's an attempt at making an argument. And it is possible to make multiple attempts. You can blog about the same topic over and over from different perspectives. Perhaps some of the arguments will be the same, but they can be clarified, refined, or dropped entirely.
From the essay viewpoint, it is possible to explore a theme or concept multiple times on your blog. This can bring consistency and meet reader expectations. And we see this with bloggers who write daily. They often touch back on the same topics they have written about many times. And it is often helpful to say the same thing in different ways that can resonate for different people.
Callbacks
In comedy and in writing, there are often callbacks. A comedian will make a joke early in their set. And then later jokes will reference that joke to make new jokes funnier. You also see this happen in fiction where some minor event early in the story eventually turns out to be the key to resolving the conflict or problem. It seems by having multiple blog posts, essays, it also gives the writer an inventory of callbacks for future blog posts.
With this in mind, not every blog post needs to be a unique masterpiece. You can make a fair attempt, knowing you'll make more attempts in the future. And you can repeat core themes or ideas to provide some consistency for your readers. By creating a larger quantity of work, you also have more opportunities for callbacks to your previous work. Put together, it's less of a chore to write blog posts more frequently.