These are great things to think about for any blog. If you want to build an audience that is engaged with your content, you absolutely need to provide engaging content. But I think most of us don’t take the opportunity to evaluate what that might be. I have been working at making my posts interesting to read — whether they are stories or shares about pictures I took out on a trail. I always feel like I could do much better, and like I keep the audience at arm’s length, in a way. So one of my New Years resolutions is is to be a bit more self-revealing and personal.

You really hit the nail on the head about the balance between the extremes of dry/technical and overly heart focused. I gravitate toward posts that have that balance and it’s actually a huge spectrum, from posts about travel to DIY projects to beer tasting. It’s really as much about voice as it is about content. I personally don’t tend to read or write highly technical posts even though my background and work are in tech.

I’ll look for your post on SEO. Steem posts are indexed by Google and the ones Google search engines perceive as high value are very sticky, remaining at the top of searches for years, even well after more updated posts on the same topic come along. Funny story. The other day I was trying to find one of my very old Steem posts - a short story about a historic event (freak storm) that happened many years ago in Minnesota. Finally I google searched “Armistice Day 1940 Steemit” and there it was.