Thank you for all the information!

When I began blogging last year, my posts were as dedicated to the facts as possible, faithfully reporting them, citing references and authorities whenever possible, and so on. I also featured fact-intense articles about American law and English language and American culture lessons. But, the readers seemed to prefer — by a large margin — my more truthy articles to my more truthful ones! So, I changed my focus. I stopped writing new posts about law or English, cut way back on citing sources, and got right to the meat of my opinions or conclusions, instead. This has made a big difference for my blog, traffic-wise. Now it doesn’t fluctuate as much as seems to be steadily growing.

Ironic, isn’t it? My blog has become more successful as a result of using the truth of traffic indicators to move my focus away from truth in my articles to truthiness. The readers prefer it. Now I strive for the intersection between the topics (and style of writing) I love and the desire of the majority of blog readers out there. If self-help is easier to digest without all the facts, then so be it. I’d rather help with less facts than be of no help with an entire reference library. But, that leaves a big chunk of why I started blogging in the first place out of the equation — at least for now. Guess I’ll just have to wait till more teens, minorities, and immigrants turn to the web for lessons in English and law.

Thanks for introducing me to “truthiness!”

Sometimes you have to accept that you might be wrong on something and then appreciate a better solution

I’m the same actually – the more I blog, the more stubborn I’m becoming in writing what I want to write.

Perhaps I should note here that the editorial approach Wendy Piersall takes is not the one I take. But I can certainly understand it, and I thought it would be interesting to throw the idea “out there” for people to consider.

You raise some great points. As a bit of background to this article, I have (and still do) take a “truthiness” approach to most of my blogging. I have a very left-brain job, so for me blogging is largely a creative outlet that taps the right hemisphere of my brain.

In recent months, however, I have come to realize that there are ways in which evidence, facts and feedback can be easily incorporated into my blogging and add to the success of the blogs I am involved in.