Slow Down And Write Great Articles - Jakob Nielsen

I know Jakob Nielsen is old school but how can he advise you to Write Articles, Not Blog Postings. To coin a phrase, I suggest he really is locked into a Pre-Internet mindset. The new Internet is about making connections not just beavering away in the forest on your perfect mouse-trap.

Yeah, I'm going to go with you on this one, Barry.

The fundamental value of a blog is author-initiated. If you want to create a great informational resource, then your primary goal should be to write timeless articles, etc. If, however, you want to create a connection to your audience you need to think personal and author your posts naturally.

I thought this was a very interesting comment:

Weblogs have their role in business, particularly as project blogs, as exemplified on several award-winning intranets. Blogs are also fine for websites that sell cheap products. On these sites, visitors can often be easily converted and the main challenge is to raise awareness. For example, a site that sells pistachio nuts should post as much content about pistachios as possible in the hope of attracting quick hits by people searching for that information. Some percentage of these visitors will buy the nuts while visiting the site.

I'd frankly go almost entirely the opposite way - I think blogs are more valuable for websites selling high-end products where a personal connection to the firm is important. Articles are also valuable, but I don't see ANY reason why a site can't offer both!

Although articles and blogs are both content you add to your site, they serve completely different targets. Most successful online marketing should contain a mix of both.

Blogs help you connect with your audience. It provides a mix between personal and professional information. Articles on the other hand are more knowledge focused and less personal.

Blog posts and articles are different kinds of writings, for different purposes. (think of the difference between magazine articles and newspaper articles for an offline example of different types of writings.)

There's nothing wrong with writing long and detailed blog posts of a timeless nature, or spitting out half a sentence that is more twitter than treatise.

Interesting that this is pure opinion and speculation on the part of Dr. Nielsen, without a hypothesis or point. He's comparing apples to oranges.

A little secret here - you can write a number of blog posts, and take the things that you learned from them as the foundation of a great article. The false dilemma that Dr. Nielsen inserts in his article is that you can only do one or the other.

Agreed - apples and oranges.

A blog post is generally more like conversation, off the cuff, while an article is more like a prepared speech. In fact, I often see blogging as like a distributed forum, with no central location. A P2P forum if you like.

It is certainly possible to create articles on a blog, just as one can in a forum, but if that article is too self-sufficient and it doesn't engage response it kind of misses the point of a blog, just like posting articles to a forum is pointless unless it engages response and feedback.

I always like studies that are backed up with analytics. How did these articles rank in the SERPs compared to blog posts? How did visitors respond to t