IBM program tries to solve blog fatigue

Blog fatigue is really just another way to describe “writer’s block,” a phenomenon which can wreck havoc in the lives of freelance writers, journalists and novelists alike. According to a recent study produced by IBM, blog fatigue is one of the main reasons why the majority of bloggers—both corporate and personal—give up on their blogging and let their website flounder. In fact, 80 percent of those who launch a corporate blog only end up posting five or fewer posts, before giving up on the project. Yet the world’s largest corporations, the most famous politicians and celebrities all realize what a crucial role blogging can play in reaching and expanding their target audience, so giving up on a blog due to writer’s blog can have very significant ramifications. One solution is to turn to content creation firms, where a large team of skilled freelance writers can produce regular blog posts on just about any topic under the sun. But the most effective option, might be to use this service in conjunction with a new widget introduced by IBM, which predicts the topics that a given blogger’s audience would most like to read.

IBM’s program, entitled Blog Muse, offers two widgets, similar to those already used on platforms such as WordPress. By using one widget, readers can indicate what topics they would most like their favourite bloggers to write about. By using the second widget, however, they can even vote on topics recommended by other readers.  Blog Muse then sends the most popular recommendations to the bloggers that are most likely to write on a given topic. Once blog posts have been published based on these user recommendations, the program will send a notification to anyone who voted for, or recommended the given subject. As such, bloggers are assured regular feedback on what readers are most interested in and more traffic is directed to their site.

Casey Dugan, representing IBM Research, noted that while Blog Muse is still in its early stages, the results seem positive. The 1,000 blogs that have tested this new widget saw the number of comments generated nearly double. While Blog Muse is not yet available commercially, IBM plans to introduce this to a wider audience of bloggers in the near future.