Feedback thread: Series versus single articles
August 17th, 2007 - Jarkko
This week at JarkkoLaine.com was dedicated to the theme of creating additional income streams. It was the first time in the history of this blog that every blog post for 5 days in a row was part of the same series, so I would like to get some feedback on this approach.
Do you think this is something I should do again in my future articles?
Or do you like it more when each article talks about a different topic?
Let me know what you think.
I prefer the series approach. This way certain topics, which typically are long or have many aspects can be explained over time.
The reader does not have to digest it all at once. The series approach introduces a nice pace. Moreover it allows the future readers to easily find specific topics and go right to the meat versus scouring giant posts.
Abhishek
I second that. A single page would be too long and I am pretty sure that posting in series brings much more visitors.
Thanks for the feedback! It sounds like I might be doing more series in the future as well then :)
Given the right topic, the series approach is preferred for the reasons Abhishek gives. This series has been engaging for me, but I’ve seen the series approach fail with content such as tutorials.
Series approach. It’s more book-like, and thus easier to digest. Concentration is rare these days, so be brave and stick to one subject at a time.
Thanks guys!
Thanks to your feedback I have already started planning for my next series which will take place sometimes during the next four weeks.
As Brian mentioned, if you don’t have enough content to make each post in the series interesting on its own, the series approach can easily fail. That’s why I’m not starting my new series right next week but only after I have collected all the material I need for it.
C2162: Ah, books! It would be actually quite nice to turn a series into an e-book once all the articles have been posted.
Jarkko,
I think the last you series you wrote was great and I thoroughly enjoyed the detail you were able to get into, although sometimes I like to read a quick post about something new. It may be just me, but my mind is definitely all over the place. I love to get a complete thought when I can… so I’d say I prefer to read short and to the point posts the majority of the time, and then a few series posts here and there.
Thanks for the feedback, Rashid! It’s good to hear that not everyone is saying I should be only writing series :)
I don’t know if it’s noticeable or not, but this week I’ve been trying a “compromise”, something in between series and separate articles: writing on one theme for the whole week. This week it’s been speed/efficiency. Let’s see how that turns out.