The other day at the Refresh Phoenix meet up, we discussed how most blog posts and content cover the same product that will be obsolete in six months. This creates dead content as well as a plethora of throw-away blog posts. If all the bloggers could band together (wikipedia style) there would be a few great places with solid content rather than 10,000 blogs that paraphrase each other.

Most blogs that are gadget based, like engadget and/or gizmodo are constantly posting new gadget reviews and rumors that only have a 6 to 12 month shelf life on the internet.

Seriously, why cant we (as bloggers) create content that has a shelf life of 2 to 3 years. Lets write articles that are focused on the long term and building on top of them. I know I am not one to talk because I too tried to make my blog (at one point) a news web 2.0 site. I know I am a news junky and tend to follow trends, but these comments were an eye opener last night.

I follow Steve Pavlina, shoemoney, and John Chow and see how their making a LOT of money blogging and it’s mostly content that has a long shelf life. My favorite post of Steve’s is 10 reasons you should never have a job. This would have been relevant 100 years ago and probably will be for another 100 more! Blogging should not be post that you read about some cool toy (iphone?) and have 1,000 bloggers list the same (its cool) features, (okay maybe for some blogs) but seriously lets focus on quality content that has a long shelf life.

For myself I have been posting up some articles that hopefully help people as well as make them think about the various choices in my life. My last article about where you are in life (where are you, where are yo going, and how are you going to get there) should be a great example of an article that has a LONG shelf life. We as a community need to focus on quality content that has a long life rather then the 100000 reactions of what you think of the iPhone (yes i know I’m guilty of this, but hey its time to move on)

I know for myself some of my own personal blog entries like tips on moving cross country, how to social engineer a wii (since wii’s are still almost impossible to buy!), and from idea to prototype are always something of interests to people and do have a solid stream of readers that find them from Google.

I know the past couple of days I have been focusing on content that will be relevant in the next 5 years and hope to see you do the same.

Tags: Blogging, howto