I’ve been spending a fair amount of time recently writing up briefing notes, which are posted on the RedMonk blog. The idea is that they’re a more formalized way to tell you, dear readers, about the briefings we receive. We don’t write up every single call we have, or even all of the content of each call, but they can get quite exhaustive.
So, now that we’ve been doing it for sometime, I wanted to ask for input from all of you. Do you read them? If so, do you like the format? Is it too long or too short? Should we continue doing them (or do more?), or would it be better to just do “normal” instead posts?
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I had forgotten about that blog, so I just added a sub and will start reading. I glanced at the last few notes and they look fantastic – I would love to see briefing notes from BEA, SAP, and some identity management products.
I realise these notes are’t ‘reviews’, but – could they be microformatted?
Those were some quick response. Thanks 😉
Robert: yes, they should be. Do yo think hReview is good enough, or should we come up with something else? I’ve thought about the question for sometime, and the one thing that I think is lacking in hReview is “advice” section. I’m not sure if that’s a make-or-brake thing, but it does beg the question if some modifications or a new format should be made up.
Scott: that’s good feedback. We’ll see what we can do for your to do list.
I vote shorter. I'd suggest a style similar to TechCrunh or GigaOM. My 2 cents.
I read them all, I think the format is great. I like the actionable items and find that analysis extremely helpful.
More details the better. The short post is all very well, but if something is interesting then I tend to find myself wanting more. The goal shouldnt be to attract the casual reader, but to inform those that value your opinions.
By all means stick a summary at the top, but I'm really tired of a world filled with soundbites instead of square meals.
I value your opinions very much, but I also value the opinion of others, which leaves only so much time in a day for all this information. Here are a couple of suggestions that would satisfy both kinds of readers:
1) For the really long posts, create a contents at the top, so we could determine what parts we want to read or whether there is anything of interest in the entire post.
2) Make two posts. One post would be a summary of the key points, and the other would be the Cote-style of pure stream of thought note-taking with all the gory details. If the two posts are easily linked, those that are deeply interested could go back and forth as their interest desired.
In both cases, it's extra work for you, but if it increases your readership, it might be worth the time.
This is all great feedback. It's good to hear that people are reading and enjoy them.
I appreciate everyone taking the time to leave a comment. I'm begining to lean towards something I've done a couple times: have the long, detailed briefing note, and then a sort of summary post on this blog that points towards it. I'm already posting links from this blog to the briefing blog posts, but I haven't really been putting much summary in those pointer posts.