02 December 2007

A while back I posted on what a rating scale might look like for "blogworthiness." The BlogWorthiness Rating Scale (BWRS) as I called it was a way to categorize blog posts on things like the following:

• Significance: If the post appears significant or insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
• Relevance: If the post is relevant or irrelevant to the reader.
• Impact: If the post has the power to inspire/uplift the reader or if it is damaging/harmful to the reader.
• Validity: If the post is fact, opinion or completely inaccurate.

But there's another thing we can look at when it comes to blogging. For lack of a more imaginative term let's just call it "Shelf Life." In other words, how many people read it? How often do they read it? How long will they read it? Would they recommend someone else read it? Is the content rich enough to keep people coming back?

Maybe it looks something like this:

5 Read Religiously: Your blog has just the right combination of functionality, fact and fun. It hits the mark with your intended audience, is well written and has just enough of the real you in it to keep them wanting more.

4 A Literary Masterpiece: Your blog serves as your literary playground. You put pen to paper (or pixel to html page in this case) and people can't help but read, because it flows, inspires and should really be in a dusty old book too.

3 A Fun Distraction: Your blog definitely doesn't solve world hunger, but it's so funny that people keep coming back just to escape reality.

2 Too Little Too Late: Your blog may have started strong, but its either missing important elements or after a period of consistent blogging you backed off to the point where people stopped checking in.

1 A Flash in the Pan: Your blog may have started strong and then fizzled, it may have been missing so many important elements that people unsubscribed, there may have been too many posts for people to keep up with or maybe it just wasn't relevant to the average person.

Nothing scientific, I know, but it's just the way my brain works. Think big picture and the rest falls into place...