I was reading an article on North x East recently, written by Leo Babauta, that suggests periodically going through your archives and getting rid of old posts that don’t add a lot of value for your readers. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, yet it surprised me when I read it. Since becoming more aquainted with blogging and what seems to be the overall consensus of the blogosphere, I’ve been under the impression that a post was to be left alone once it was published. Under certain circumstances, I’ve seen bloggers remove posts that generated some very heated debate and/or posts that were confrontational, but that’s a rare exception. I know there aren’t any rules, but thats been my impression.
While optimizing the “Signal-to-Noise Ratio” of your blog, Leo suggests:
Every month or two, you should go back over your archives. This is a daunting task for many bloggers, but it helps tremendously. You might have had a bunch of posts that talked about site updates, or your daily life, that most people don’t find interesting when they go over your archives. They want to find the amazing posts. If a post didn’t do well, perhaps it’s time to toss it. Cut out the noise.
The more I think about this, it really does make a lot of sense. Especially posts that announce site updates, etc. I’m not sure exactly what he means by posts that didn’t do well……..posts that didn’t generate many comments, perhaps? Mmmm, I’m not sure that would be a good way to decide how useful a post is.
What about you? What do you think about deleting older posts that don’t necessarily give the reader any benefit? How do you decide which ones stay and which ones go? I’m genuinely interested…
Tags: Business, Web by Anthony ∗ 19 Comments »
