Book's advantage over a blog or improve your blog.
Previously, to find out the answer to the question we were interested in, we went to the library or bookstore, found the bookshelf we needed, reread a number of tables of contents, and only after that, choosing two or three books, giving almost the last money, went home to carefully read each from cover to cover. Now it is enough to have the Internet, search engine - and here we are already reading the articles of something from the blog. It would seem that everything has become much easier. But the book is this whole mountain of material devoted to a specific topic, and after reading the book, we not only learned the answer to the question, but also began to understand the whole topic much better. Reading the blog article, we just find out the answer to the question.
Anyone who has ever written / tried to write a book knows that one of the most difficult moments is to give the material the correct sequence of presentation. Even as part of writing one article, it can be difficult to build your thoughts into something accessible to another person.
Blogs have made life easier for the authors - no need to think about the general order of the articles, no need to think about any additional explanations - the author writes only what he wants to write, and the article is not connected with other articles (except for the general subject).
And it is this - the sequence and integrity of the entire presentation - that distinguishes the book from the blog (and the difference is clearly in favor of the books). The author of the book begins from the very beginning, from the simplest, which allows even a beginner and a little-educated reader to understand the material, and step by step to get to the most difficult topics. In the case of a blog, the reader has to adapt to the author more, look for incomprehensible moments of articles on the entire blog or elsewhere on the Internet (according to that, there are “experts” who try to do complicated things, but do not know the simplest).
Trying to get the author to blog consistently - stupid and pointless, he will have to spend more time and nerves, in the end he will stop sharing his invaluable experience. The solution should be simple for the author and convenient for the reader.
A relatively easy solution is to create a table of contents for your blog. Under the table of contents means some other principle of organizing all your articles, and not just by the time of publication. This table of contents in its essence will be no different from the table of contents in the book, in which, according to your logic, all articles will be arranged.
The first objection - most of this table of contents will initially be empty, and there is a chance that certain moments will not be covered by the author (if the author of the blog is not interested in sorting out a particular question - he will not do that). This problem can be solved simply - instead of these voids, you can provide links to other resources (surely these questions were at least somehow and covered by someone, and you can help readers at least by indicating the source that helped you in due time) .
The second objection - why create a table of contents, if you already have a tag cloud, and similar articles, and a bunch of other fashionable tools. The objection in its logic is similar to the question "Why do we need sorting, if there is a search?". The table of contents allows you to consistently read the material, for example, from the simplest to the most complex, while using the search tools the reader has only to find the whole sequence for himself.
And it is worth going to the main question:
The most obvious way I have already mentioned is from simple to complex . In most cases, articles can always be placed in order of complexity. The difficulty in this case will be the necessary level of preparation of the reader before reading the article. The simplest example is provided by blogs offering different lessons to the reader. For example, designers' sites often try to teach something, and at the beginning of such lessons there is always a reservation - “this lesson is for experienced ...” or vice versa “a lesson for those who are not familiar enough ...”. But few of these sites offer sorting or searching by the level of difficulty of the lessons, and this is an obvious minus.
')
Another principle is to start from the material itself and to group articles. An example would be blogs on the topic of designs and usability, where first there could be articles describing general rules and patterns, and then recommendations on specific elements and situations. Or blogs about personal development - not every author bothers himself to somehow tell the reader what to read in the first place, but why go on later.
Timing and alphabetical order are also principles by which articles can be dispersed. In which cases? For example, the blog "IT biographies" can be sorted alphabetically (by adding names and surnames to the headers). Also, blogs describing various ancient inventions and similar topics - posting articles as these new innovations appear would be much more convenient than posting by the time of publication.
It should look, oddly enough, as the most common table of contents. You should not display the announcement and any additional information - only the headlines of your articles. With an average number of articles 50-100 in the blog / section - the table of contents in a simple and compact form will show the reader all its essence.
Of course, not all blog articles can be included in your table of contents, and this is normal. They can easily be listed after. The main thing is that we have achieved the ordering of all the material that is in your blog, created its integrity as an information source.
Unfortunately, I can not give specific examples of the implementation of such an idea, and the article because of this is similar to the theory-assumption. But, I think, the most risky of bloggers can evaluate and test this thought on their own experience.
Introduction
Anyone who has ever written / tried to write a book knows that one of the most difficult moments is to give the material the correct sequence of presentation. Even as part of writing one article, it can be difficult to build your thoughts into something accessible to another person.
Blogs have made life easier for the authors - no need to think about the general order of the articles, no need to think about any additional explanations - the author writes only what he wants to write, and the article is not connected with other articles (except for the general subject).
And it is this - the sequence and integrity of the entire presentation - that distinguishes the book from the blog (and the difference is clearly in favor of the books). The author of the book begins from the very beginning, from the simplest, which allows even a beginner and a little-educated reader to understand the material, and step by step to get to the most difficult topics. In the case of a blog, the reader has to adapt to the author more, look for incomprehensible moments of articles on the entire blog or elsewhere on the Internet (according to that, there are “experts” who try to do complicated things, but do not know the simplest).
How to solve the problem?
Trying to get the author to blog consistently - stupid and pointless, he will have to spend more time and nerves, in the end he will stop sharing his invaluable experience. The solution should be simple for the author and convenient for the reader.
A relatively easy solution is to create a table of contents for your blog. Under the table of contents means some other principle of organizing all your articles, and not just by the time of publication. This table of contents in its essence will be no different from the table of contents in the book, in which, according to your logic, all articles will be arranged.
The first objection - most of this table of contents will initially be empty, and there is a chance that certain moments will not be covered by the author (if the author of the blog is not interested in sorting out a particular question - he will not do that). This problem can be solved simply - instead of these voids, you can provide links to other resources (surely these questions were at least somehow and covered by someone, and you can help readers at least by indicating the source that helped you in due time) .
The second objection - why create a table of contents, if you already have a tag cloud, and similar articles, and a bunch of other fashionable tools. The objection in its logic is similar to the question "Why do we need sorting, if there is a search?". The table of contents allows you to consistently read the material, for example, from the simplest to the most complex, while using the search tools the reader has only to find the whole sequence for himself.
And it is worth going to the main question:
And on what principle to sort?
The most obvious way I have already mentioned is from simple to complex . In most cases, articles can always be placed in order of complexity. The difficulty in this case will be the necessary level of preparation of the reader before reading the article. The simplest example is provided by blogs offering different lessons to the reader. For example, designers' sites often try to teach something, and at the beginning of such lessons there is always a reservation - “this lesson is for experienced ...” or vice versa “a lesson for those who are not familiar enough ...”. But few of these sites offer sorting or searching by the level of difficulty of the lessons, and this is an obvious minus.
')
Another principle is to start from the material itself and to group articles. An example would be blogs on the topic of designs and usability, where first there could be articles describing general rules and patterns, and then recommendations on specific elements and situations. Or blogs about personal development - not every author bothers himself to somehow tell the reader what to read in the first place, but why go on later.
Timing and alphabetical order are also principles by which articles can be dispersed. In which cases? For example, the blog "IT biographies" can be sorted alphabetically (by adding names and surnames to the headers). Also, blogs describing various ancient inventions and similar topics - posting articles as these new innovations appear would be much more convenient than posting by the time of publication.
What should it look like?
It should look, oddly enough, as the most common table of contents. You should not display the announcement and any additional information - only the headlines of your articles. With an average number of articles 50-100 in the blog / section - the table of contents in a simple and compact form will show the reader all its essence.
In the end
Of course, not all blog articles can be included in your table of contents, and this is normal. They can easily be listed after. The main thing is that we have achieved the ordering of all the material that is in your blog, created its integrity as an information source.
Unfortunately, I can not give specific examples of the implementation of such an idea, and the article because of this is similar to the theory-assumption. But, I think, the most risky of bloggers can evaluate and test this thought on their own experience.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/128716/
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