re: Bloggers, can we make better titles for our posts?
Original post: Bloggers, can we make better titles for our posts? | Michael Harley
Overall I agree with Michael's premise: blogs need better titles. I agree; I think I browse Bubbles and Bear's discovery page in much the same way. You can't read everything, and titles are a good shorthand way to guess if it's something you'd be into1.
Where I disagree:
I think this one might be a bit unpopular but I do not like the round-up posts. You know the ones. They're titled Week Notes, Week in Review, Weekly Links and the like. When I'm cruising Bubbles, I do not click weekly notes from randos. For bloggers I know and have followed, I do often scan them.
This one probably is less write better titles and is more write better posts. I think many people use these posts as a writing tool to exercise their writing muscles. I'd suggest a better tool is the age-old favorite of writing blog posts about blogging, like I'm doing here.
People like doing weekly recaps and link round-ups, and that's not a problem. They're usually very identifiable and easy to skip if you don't want to read them. Michael, I think you're right on the nose about that being an unpopular opinion. Your second paragraph is also assigning judgment on what makes a "good" or "bad" blog post. We (collective "we", as in a blogging community) don't need to discourage people from writing if that's what they want to write.
In addition, I will sometimes click through on random week notes from people I don't know; sometimes that's a good way to get a quick summary of who the person is. Secondly, it brings me to their blog, where—if I find their post interesting enough to skim through—I will find other things they've written and decide if I want to add their feed to my RSS reader.
Anyway. I'm procrastinating from work; earlier this afternoon I lamented that I have a lot of thoughts but couldn't put anything to paper. I was supposed to tackle my to-do list but I opened Bubbles and started reading. Woops!
Reply by email Share this post Mastodon Bluesky
The good thing about Bubbles is that if you click through the Bubbles listing, you at least get the first few sentences of the post.↩