I just deleted an entire blog post I worked on tonight. It was probably somewhere around 400 words long and it's gone. Deleted. Forever.
It's gone because it was garbage. It wasn't good. I thought there was a point to be made and after I walked away from it and came back a little later I asked myself this question: "If I was reading this post what would I learn." The answer to my own question was a resounding, "Not a whole lot." With that answer I deleted the post two seconds later.
The Tension of Quality and Quantity
When you have a blog you feel pressure to post frequently and sometimes you're going to be inclined to publish something that's not very good. This is one of the great benefits of blogging but it's also one of the drawbacks.
It's good because it lets us work out ideas and the process forces us to articulate things we might not otherwise be able to put into words. It's bad, however, because blogging, in business, isn't intended to be mere catharsis. It's supposed to earn attention and add value to the people who read it. To that end, if you keep writing stuff that isn't any good you can rightly assume people will quit reading. And therein lies the big dilemma: the tension between creating frequent content and generating quality content.
How do bloggers keep generating good content regularly? I don't know that there's a single good answer for this but one of the keys is to question your own content. By that I mean you should evaluate what you're really trying to say with each post and determine if it really has any value. Does it entertain? Inspire? Are you educating somehow? Are you informing people about something relevant or meaningful?
My first attempt at a blog post tonight didn't do any of those things. You'll never know what it was about and trust me, you won't miss it. Hopefully, this one had some value.