Hello Goat: The Blog

I’m addicted to RSS feeds. I read roughly 300 feeds a week from all realms of nerdom, design, online marketing, social media – you get the point.

Of all of these feeds, the one thing that really bothers me — to the point of un-following some feeds — is when a writer gives an opinion article a controversial title, but within the article itself takes no stance on the subjects at hand.

One example of this is the “Smart phone OS showdown: iPhone vs Android vs Palm Pre” article on CNet’s UK site. The title suggests that the writer is pitting these mobile operating systems against each other. I assumed that they’d give a thorough breakdown of which one is best and why. The author even ends the first page with two questions “But will there be a winner? Will one phone – and it’s OS – reign supreme?

As I read this first page, I thought… Ooh, I want to know which one is definitively better than the rest because I am in the market for a smart phone and want to make an educated choice; I trust CNet, so maybe they can help me with my decision.

Then what happens? I have to read though 11 individual pages of various amounts of tech, design, user experience and interface jargon which I have to wait for each individual page to load because who really wants to read a blog post all on one page (note sarcasm and… I’ll digress). Don’t get me wrong the article does offer up some very good insight on each of the devices and their respective OSs (Is that how you make that plural???). Page 12 is titled Conclusion — I see that title and I immediately think ok Mike, here comes the pay-off… This summary will lend itself to your decision making…

What do I see…? The first sentence says — “It’s truly hard to pick a ‘winner’ here.” What??? I just waded through 12 pages of article and ads to get to this???

Then there’s a milquetoast summary of the entire review and an apology – “We’re sorry to wimp out, be we can’t decide this for you.” – ???

I wanted to punch something.

I wasn’t looking for them to decide for me, but I was looking for their opinion. They’d done tons of research and I wanted the recommendation to validate or negate the direction I was leaning.

So, what’s my point…? My point is; take a stand. Let me say that again… TAKE A STAND. Seriously. It’s your job as a blogger to offer an opinion; provide your readers some value whether they agree with you or not. Let them challenge you in the comments if they don’t agree. Open up some dialog on the topics you are writing about. That’s far more interesting than writing a review on something that offers no insight or opinion and then letting the “fanboys” slug it out in the comments.

Trust me when I say this…you will gain a far better and larger following on your blog if you offer up your professional and personal opinions. You will start better and more engaging conversations about subjects that interest your followers. You will offer more value and gain credibility for taking a stand. (See how I wrapped that up with the title in the last line. Pretty clever huh?!?)