Discussions

I’m a middle child---I’ve illustrated that in many ways on my website, The Pioneer Woman, not the least of which is my insistence on changing things up and avoiding ruts whenever I can. Oh, don’t get me wrong---I fall into ruts. Sometimes I realize I’ve gone five or six days in a row posting photos of cows. I don’t mean to do it, but if I have a huge surplus of bovine photos lying around it can be tempting to fall back on what’s familiar and comfortable day after day...and before I know it, there are cows...COWS EVERYWHERE!

I find I'm happiest with my site---and that folks who read it are more engaged---when I'm not doing or writing about the same things day after day. Now, the nature of my website---with five different sections, Lord help my retinas---makes it a little easier to keep things changed up. But even on my Confessions section---which is sort of the base on which I built my site---I try to vary my content from day to day.

Rather than talk in abstracts, I'm just going to randomly select a recent week on Confessions and examine whether I accomplished the variety I usually strive for.

I'll be right back.

Okay. I'm back. Here's how that week in March shaped up:

Monday: "Monday Morning Cow" - Posted a photo of an old cow and compared my face to hers. Bad bangs, discolorations, a beauty mark

Tuesday: "Through Marlboro Man's Eyes" - Showed photos my husband had taken when he went to work cattle---accidental dashboard shot and all

Wednesday: "The Fastest Gun in the West" - A photo of my kids and their cousins running in the sunset; a discussion of how fast a runner my son is and how he always smokes his siblings and cousins and how that makes Marlboro Man feel superior

Thursday: "Sunset, Real Time" - A series of photos of our creek and sunset, just before it became too dark to see. It was more of a serious, contemplative post than normal...I was probably hormonal at the time.

Friday: “This Can’t Be Normal” - Posted a bizarre series of photos of my weird Basset Hound sacked out on my living room chair. Here’s one of those unfortunate shots:

(Sorry about that.)

Sunday: “Snapshot” - A recent photo of my growing-older-by-the-second daughter who, at age eleven now wears a size eleven shoe. Somewhere in the post I post a photo of Elaine Benis from Seinfeld and discuss putting on a pair of her Mary Janes and twirling around the kitchen or something that made zero sense.

So, to strip it down, here was the week of content:

Cow
Husband’s photos
My lightning-fast son, sibling rivalry
Nature photography; contemplation
Freaky dog
Oldest child growing older
____________________________

Now, if you reduced those things to different shapes, it might look like this:

Square
Circle
Oval
Triangle
Rectangle
Star

Now again, don’t get me wrong. From time to time I’ll fall into a rut where I post five days in a row of cattle photos. Or some weeks, I do a little too much of my Basset Hound. On those weeks, the shape pattern might look more like this:

Square
Square
Rectangle
Square
Rectangle
Rectangle

Which do you think is more interesting?
___________________________

There are lots of advantages to keeping things mixed up on your blog. Here are a couple of them:

1. It keeps your boredom as a blogger at bay. I have a blast letting my weird brain take me in unknown directions every day. If I scheduled and mapped out posts ahead of times, it wouldn’t feel right to me. Flying by the seat of my pants is so much more fun.
2. It’s more fun for readers. I love going to a website when I have no earthly idea what to expect on any give day. If it’s a blog that posts the same kind of thing every day, my longterm interest will wane. I want to be surprised, challenged, and excited by a website

So next week, when you blog, try something different every day. Do a recipe, a giveaway, a funny commentary, a serious moment, a photo from your high school yearbook, a commentary on dust. Provide a smorgasbord of content!

It keeps the fun alive.