For Links or For Readers?

tutorials-and-teachingIt is no secret that if you create a long list of resources – like “50 Beautiful Blog Designs“, “100+ Massive CSS Toolbox” or “50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory“, that blog post will get tonnes of comments, saved in bookmarks, delicious-ed, digged, twittered, reddit, stumbled upon and all that stuff.

The question however, is “How useful is this for your readers?”

Do you REALLY need 10 different CSS cheat sheets? Do you actually take the time to go through the tonnes of tutorials? What do you do when you see such resources? Do you say “Wow! Lets get going with some tutorials right now!”, or “Wow, this is a great list, but I’ll save it for later when I have the time?”

If you are like me, you do the latter. Most of the time, I just know that it is a good list of resources – but I don’t even go though the list.

So when do you actually “have time?” And even when you do, do you think “Yeah, I should fire up that 100 tutorials I saved last time and go thru them one by one?!”

Today is the age of information overload and attention scarcity. We want relevant and useful information, and we expect Google to help us filter that out. When I am setting up a photo gallery in WordPress, I would rather have ONE tutorial teaching me how to do it right, than “100 Awesome WordPress Photo Gallery Tutorials”.

Are you really writing for your readers, or are you writing for just pure link baiting?

Don’t get me wrong. I love those long lists of resources, like you. Its just that I realise I have tonnes of them in my bookmarks and don’t remember re-referencing any of them for real use.

Comments

  1. I totally agree.

    I keep lists upon lists of resources but I now know I don’t really have the time to implement any of them.

    Okay, I will some day but only when I have the time.

  2. I write for potential new clients. Articles will need to be interesting for them. All about how to get a better website that gives your business results! It’s usually on a topic that I’m interested in or researching at that moment.