When publishing a new blog post, I’ve recently moved away from Post + Email. I now select Post (only) the majority of the time. This keeps an email from being sent to my subscribers every time a new post goes up.
One day I will write an unnecessarily long essay on the topic. But for now the shorter version is:
I want to blog more. But I don’t want to inundate my subscribers’ inboxes every single time I publish a new post.1 In terms of email frequency, I’m trying to limit this to once per week. Email notifications will go out for longer posts, usually of the story variety (1,000-plus words).
I want people to visit the site in a more natural way. I don’t want the bulk of visits to be from a prompt that a new post is live. There’s more on, and to, my site than the recent post. I want visitors to explore, to dig into the full archive, read my random thoughts daily blog, or find another easter egg hidden somewhere on the site.2
My desire to move in this direction has been spurred by blogging daily at Random Thoughts. I like the change of pace. I love writing in vignettes. The bread and butter of my site has always been longform, but I love shortform blogging. Plus my favorite blogs to read aren’t those with longform essays updated one to four times a month. It’s the short form blogs updated daily (or almost daily) like Robert Birming and An Almost Anonymous Blog.
Random Thoughts will continue to live on. But I plan to incorporate the wordier (but not too wordy) days into my main blog using Post-only.
Here’s an example from last night about wishing my car had a cassette player.
Footnotes
- You may be surprised how much the thought of slamming someone’s inbox bothers me, but I assure you it does. And because it does, I severely restrict how much and how often I post on my blog. Thankfully, Post (only) is a good solution. This feature hasn’t always existed without a time-consuming workaround.
- You might be surprised to learn I only subscribe by email to one blog. What I do is keep a Bookmarks folder of my favorite blogs and check them out daily or at least a few times a week to see what’s new. I have an RSS feed for my site but I don’t personally read blogs via RSS. Just not my thing. I like a unique site design experience. I want to read your words on the font of your choosing.