Weekly Roundups vs Short Stories

I process a lot of stories each week, which I do not think is at all unique. While I tend to read short, medium, and longer form pieces, I notice that people tend to tune into my shorter, more concise pieces. I’m an aggregator, analyst, so people probably are looking to me to understand what is going on and in turn I’m looking for individual API providers and service providers to help me keep in tune with what is going on with their operations–I depend on blog posts, change logs, and other common building blocks to do my work.

One recommendation I have for API providers and service providers when it comes to their communication strategies is to provide short concise blog posts regarding specific goings on. Make your blog posts like your API resources–doing one thing and doing it well. You can still do a round-up at the end of the week providing an executive summary, but don’t cut out the short individual blog posts. In my experience, people tend to read titles, tweets, and don’t have much attention span beyond 300 to 500 words. Personally, if I am busy, the first thing I cut out each week is the lengthy weekly roundups from providers–I will scan, but really do not read much of the detail if something catches my eyes.

This advice isn’t for other aggregators and analysts. Your job is to round up and provide and overview of what is going on. My advice is for individual API providers looking to update everyone with what is going on with their API operations, services, tooling, customers, and other common things you should be evangelizing and communicating as part of your regular operations. This is just some feedback from someone who is passionate about consuming as much information as I possibly can each week. Many short stories are better than just a single round-up, and you tend to get better search and social media bang for your buck when you have well-crafted titles, and a short body, that focuses on a single topic. Think of your API communication strategy similar to your microservices approach and I think you’ll get the reach you are looking for.