Post Series: Yes Or No?

Posted by scoop on January 11th, 2009 in Blog basics, Writing, Writing Content |

Have you encountered blogs where in the blogger writes about a certain topic and then chops up his ideas into several posts? I am pretty sure that you have seen this blog post format. Personally, I like using the series format, especially if I have a topic that has so many aspects. Instead of delivering everything in one long blow, I think that spreading out the ideas gives the readers a chance to ruminate on them. It also makes for easier reading.

However, I had this discussion with another blogger friend who thought otherwise. He said that he was not a fan of post series because he does not like his flow of thought being interrupted. He would rather have everything delivered all at once than having to wait for the next installment.

So what is it really, is it good to use a series of posts to talk about a single topic or is it taboo? I stand by my preference, given some considerations. Perhaps the heaviest of these considerations is the fact that your topic should be quite meaty, allowing you to offer new information in every single post in the series. If you write a series with no fresh content in each post, that is another story.

Another advantage of writing a series of posts is the fact that the subtopics can be accessed non-sequentially. That is, if you craft your series well, you can divide the posts into subtopics which are unique and can stand on their own. As such, if a reader is only interested in a specific subtopic, he does not have to wade through a long article to get to his goal.

What do you think? Is writing a series of posts a good practice or not?