Tony Karrer and eLearning Technology

In my post Blogs of Interest - August 06 Part Two, I mentioned Tony Karrer's eLearning Technology blog. The post also included a short discussion on blogging.

Since I wrote that post Tony has put up a very helpful new post, First Time Visitor Guide.

In this post Tony starts with the point that visiting an active blog that has been in existence for some time can be a daunting experience. He goes on to outline the blog's objectives, emphasises the importance of and invites interaction, and then provides a topic list with some key past posts.

I do wish more people would follow this approach. Yes, you can use the search facility or topic listings (I don't have a topic list simply as because I have not worked out how to do it yet), but this can be a pretty much hit and miss affair.

I think that it is much better from a reader perspective if bloggers provide links to relevant past stories in new posts, together from time to time with the type of summary guide provided by Tony.

Why don't more of us do it?

I think that it's part that we forget new visitors, forget that current visitors will themselves forget past stories. We also fail to realise how our own memories slip. In the last four months I have posted 127 stories on four different blogs. Do I remember every story, where it was posted and when? No, I do not.

So Tony's new post is both a helpful guide to his site visitors and, I suspect, himself, as well as a useful lesson to all active bloggers.