Would you like to provide something useful to your readers? Would you like to have more people read what you have to say?
If so, the first thing you need to ask yourself is: What value are you providing to your readers?
If you can’t answer this question clearly & with a purpose, maybe it’s time to change, even if it’s just a little.
China bloggers: Sometimes Missing the Forest for the Trees
It’s pretty easy to see that most of the ‘easy’ topics in the China blog-o-sphere have already been done. If you have a blog about China, you probably have written about a number of such topics. Don’t beat yourself up about this, we all have slightly different views on similar issues, and it’s good to get multiple perspectives on many issues.
Many blog posts by expats in China are also focused on current events – again, this is fine, after all a multitude of opinions about any given event is good (as long as it isn’t taken to the extreme)
Another side of the China blogging spectrum are cute little observations, sometimes-pointless rants, or just thoughts about our lives. This is a great way of getting down your memories, and oftentimes we can teach others more through stories than from straight-out advice.
But couldn’t China Bloggers do more?
As bloggers in China, we could do so much more, and make China blogging more than just a collection of observations about living in the middle kingdom.
There are some who have already made some major steps in this direction, including:
- Lonnie, Yanzhi, and others at The Dream Blog
- Ryan with Lost Laowai and The Hao Hao Report
- Ben Ross with his partial How to Order Chinese Food
- And many, many more (additions below added post-publishing)
- Rick’s Dalian Dalian
- fiLi’s Chinalyst
- John’s China Blog List
- The Library Project
- This guide to Chongqing
But you don’t have to open an entire site dedicated to a specific idea or theme to provide some extra juice to the China expat blog-o-sphere – just a little bit more effort is all that it would take.
In fact, together we could get a hell of a lot more done together than individually. That, of course, is the point of this blog I am writing on, but there are other things that could be done.
What more could China bloggers do?
Just some thoughts:
- A Collection of City Guides about China – These could be completed individually by different bloggers in China, and then compiled in one place or all compiled at any blog that contributed one of the guides. Think Lonely Planet – with much more in depth content.
- A Thorough Guide to Living in China – With contributions from many different people. Kind of like the wiki on this site, but in a free ebook book / manifesto form.
- A collection of crazy stories about China – again thrown together as a free book or resource.
- Some version of a YouTube China show that is entertaining and maybe even useful – Yes, Sexy in Beijing is a pretty good example.
- An expanded China food guide, along the lines of Ben’s site but with additional food categories, more functionality (ranked by ratings and paired with audio, as possible examples), and a printable version of the guide.
- Any number of ideas that are probably already floating around your head – share them below instead of keeping them secret, where they might die a quiet death anyway.
What do you think? Share your thoughts below (I’m ready to be torn a new one if necessary)
ps – Though not on the scale of the projects or even of the half-thunk ideas above, it’d be great if you participated in another China blogging project I just posted: Why Come to China? – Help to provide advice to those pondering this question.
And if you start your own China blogging project, let me know, ’cause I’ll probably want to take part. As hopefully many reading this would.
Two words:
Dalian Dalian
@Rick: Bit redundant isn’t it 😉 hahaha. jk.
@Jeremy: You forgot fiLi‘s excellent Chinalyst and John‘s China Blog List.
I think that for a lot of people it’s a time commitment. Throwing a couple posts up on a pre-made blog is one thing, but undertaking a Web site of some kind, it’s heavy.
Still, good points all. I really like the crazy stories idea. I’ve been looking for something to kick off Lost Laowai Publishing – maybe we can put something together with proceeds going to a suitable and worthy cause.
Rick,
Nice resource – you’ve put a lot of work into it since last looking.
On a similar note, I figured I’d mention the first and only city guide to Chongqing that deserves mention:
http://chongqingguide.wordpress.com/
While this city isn’t a tourist destination on the level of Beijing, Shanghai, and Xi’an, it still is attracting lots of visitors who are coming here with absolutely no respectable resource to help them. Until this guide came out…
I can’t claim authorship at all. Totally initiated by a girl who goes by the name Chinkerfly.
Ryan,
Let me add those resources in so as not to anger the gods.
By the way, check your email.
– Jeremy
Thanks Matt 😉 I actually made this comment late last night, should have been the first comment actually, but it never showed up.
“These are all excellent ideas. Here’s my own personal contribution (which still needs some work): Discover Chongqing: 2007 Guide — Need a proxy to view it in China. It’d be wonderful to have a dedicated open server, but I can’t afford it.
Also, I may start working for ChinaOnTv soon. They have tons of video content about China and Chinese culture. I want to suggest to them the possibility of opening up a section for user submitted videos and content, and a forum, they really need a forum!
A bit more about DalianDalian, since I’m in on that project as well:
The site is meant to be collaborative, so anyone in Dalian or passing through can add to the site. Suggestions and critiques, too, are welcome.
As Ryan said, most people don’t have the time or desire to build an entire site from the ground up. But many hands make light work, as they say, and every bit of information is useful to someone.
@Everyone: Who has a skype account? Collaborative Podcast show, anyone? (My skype: pandapassport)
P.S. Re Podcast, Everyone needs to buy their ass a USB headset/mic combo like mine.
@Rick
Definitely a good idea to flesh out. USB headphones – Check, but kind of broken (both sets). Need to find a better brand…
Hi Jeremy, Hoping to be a new blogger here on LostLaowai it was great to read your post, and I love the ideas.
My problem is time. Already writing travel reviews and offering advice for another website as part of their community. I did have my own site but closed it down as I didn’t have enough time to run it.
I’d be happy to contribute some stuff to other sites/projects given half a minute and I’m going to check your project out now.
I don’t want to see blogging become prescriptive though… (not suggesting this is what you’re saying) just that if I need my space here just to tell things as they are (which is kind of what I need it for) then that’s OK too.
Ryan, I’m definitely up for contributing to worthy causes when it gets off the ground.
The beauty of blogging is its freedom, so let’s keep posting….
Hi Tam,
Running a blog doesn’t take too much time, but you definitely get more exposure to your ideas by going with a community site, unless you have already put in a bunch of leg-work.
Hopefully all of us can get a bunch more interesting stuff going that many can participate in.
For the record, if you’ve got a cool China-related project that you’d like help with or a home for, feel free to contact me. A big reason I started this site was to give a home to innovative and interesting things about China.
So many ideas, so little time. My finger is slightly better, must remember not to use it as an ashtray.
Personally, I like websites that are focussed. They have good quality content, reputation, often an insider or expert’s perspective. Basically, I know what I’m going to get when I visit. I visit CLB for interesting writing about Law/Business, I visit CFM for excellent insight into Chinese economics, I visit Shopgirl for… well I don’t, because her focus is in an area that I’m not much interested in.
Which is why being everything to everybody may not be a great idea. There are ways to filter, navigate, etc, but my experience with DalianDalian.com is that as a website becomes more complex (we have blogs, forums, photos, news, listings, reviews, all collaborative) navigation and providing a site focus becomes really quite hard. Pleasing someone looking for a review, to someone wanting to browse some photos, to someone looking for background information on the city, all on one front page and keeping everything obvious and a minimum of clicks away, is tough. And with just one city so far, we’re pretty focussed.
It’s tough. Collaborative sites do get more traffic I suppose because they get more content. Yet filters at the same time, like haohaoreport, go a great way towards getting good content recognised.
Great ideas all, but think about the implementation of them and keeping them useful, obvious and easy to navigate. What’s obvious is on a website for a web-savvy blogger may not be appreciated/realised by a random punter. And it’s all quite time consuming!
Well said Alex. I tend to agree that I visit sites that are more focused. I think there’s room for both focused and wide-spanning sites though. Print is a good example to pull from when looking at readership trends.
There is a huge industry in trade magazines – magazines that people outside that industry would never even know about, but are hugely popular in that industry. Then, there are also widely read generic magazines that have only a mild focus (Time, People, etc.). I think both server a purpose and visitors tend to have different reasons for visiting them.
Hey,
Thanks for the shout out….
I think one great supporter of everything happening in the sphere is Christine Lu at The China Business Network ( http://thechinabusinessnetwork.com/ )….She backs anything that has merit…She even gives free radio snydication to anyone that supports our dreamblogue project in a major way…and the quality of her shows are amazing….
Great list….:-)
Thanks Jeremy for including my site up there among all those giants! Quick update, I moved the site to a different server (hosting provided by Ryan!) so it is no longer behind the firewall. Here’s the new address. http://www.thechonx.com