Blogger Indonesia of the Week (79): Ryan Octavianus

One thing that I always suggest every new blogger who asks me as to how to be a prolific blog writer is that: don’t be too obsessed with a long tiring post and a lot of comments. As far as blogging, quality content neither lies in a quantity of words nor depends much on many comments. Rather it’s on how new and enlightening your idea in a particular blog post is. That’s what a quality blog content is all about. Many famous blog writer or blogger, such as Instapundit with 100k unique visitors/day is making a brief post most of the time and with no comment at all.

I keep repeating that advice to every blogger, particularly the new one, for many reasons the most important of which is most bloggers are grassroot people, non-expert writer if you like, who are not trained and not used to write a long essay, besides most bloggers are reluctant to read a long blog post; they are more concerned with their own blog . At the same time, they may have one or two very precious fresh ideas which could enrich the horizon of intellectual discourse. It’s in this context that blog and bloggers may have a chance to contribute in an existing public debates which are prevalent in a particular time and generation.

I found Ryan Octavianus’s blog is a good example of that. First, his blog posts are mostly short, right on the money. Second, some of his blog content offer a new idea that may benefit a non-Indonesian: translating Indonesian song lyrics into English. That will not only benefit foreigners who try to learn Bahasa Indonesia, but also those Indonesian who wants to learn English expression from their own songs.

This kind of idea and contribution will not and cannot be covered by those so-called expert-bloggers who spend most of their time focusing on one or two field of study. This kind of idea and “duty” can easily be done by ordinary people like us, you and me, who are not so much learning by reading the books; rather learning a lot from “reading” everything surrounds us; from the nature, from the behaviour of people and from reality bitter and sweet that we see everyday. That is the power of blog.

• Read complete list of previous Blogger Indonesia of the Weeks.
• You’ve got an English-speaking blog? Tell us in the comment box here. Remember to read the requirements first.