February 6, 2005
blog as if your life depended on it
Blog As If Your Life Depended On It!
Blogging, I firmly believe, is the premier emergent marketing-brandbuilding-lovemarkcreating tool of our times! It is the premier way to have intimate-engaging-informative-WOWing “conversations” with Clients and prospects! This all goes double for small enterprises and niche enterprises; and goes triple for the Professional Services; and works wonders in the Public Sector as well.
Do you see Blogging in these exalted lights? If not, why not? Please … Blog-As-If-Your-Professional-Success-Depended-On-It.
(Hint: I think it does.)
I completely agree. “We have gone beyond the tipping point. We are not blogging because it’s cool or hip. It’s now mostly about survival yak yak yak…”
Blogging isn’t that hard, you know. Anybody can do it. And most people I know professionally are smart and lucid enough to do it well.
I’m seeing two problems holding them back:
1. Getting them to actually keep at it. They want the thing to magically write itself.
Tom Peters tries to bypass this problem by paying other people to help write his stuff. I’m not sure if I would recommend this approach. People come to your blog to hear what you have to say, not to hear what your underlings have to say.
2. Expecting the blog to behave like an old-style website.
Like a traditional, Flash-enabled, bell & whistle website, they pay the webmaster a wad of cash, they write a few pages of stuff, and suddenly they expect the world to beat a path to their door.
It doesn’t work that way. What works is writing better stuff, more often, and doing it for longer than the next guy.
The reason Jeff Jarvis’ blog is one of the most widely read in the world is exactly for those reasons:
–He’s been doing it longer than most.
–The quality of his writing is better than most.
–The quantity of his output is greater than most.
And the same is true for every other “A-Lister” on my list.
Continuity. It’s all about continuity.
[My two cents:] If you really, really want your blog to be read by a lot of people, you’re going to have to be prepared to put in the kind of sustained effort it takes to get a published book out, before you start seeing the kind of results you’re hoping for.
How much effort would it take to write a bestseller on a subject you know a lot about? That’s about ballpark.
Good advice on a day in which I’m considering to stop blogging after about 3 months.
Hugh, my life does depend on it!!!
Thanks
Cheers, BSIYF
My two cents: That would be about five hours a day. Every day. For the rest of your life. That’s a bit too much for some people, especially if their business isn’t webcentric. If you’re working in The Long Tail, that’s then not an option. You must blog. Not, is desiring to win Wimbledon without playing tennis.
Can’t disagree with what holds people back. I’d add though — a fear of intimacy. Seriously. You’re working a smaller room. This isn’t broadcast. It’s a cocktail party. You’re juggling four or five conversations, mixing drinks, and keeping you’re eye on the babe in the corner.
As well: the power thing. Taking back power, power that you have handed over to experts — the mediators — is hard. It goes against your training. Blogging is plumbing.
And the control thing. Blogging is a threat. Blogging undermines certain power structures — those based in the sociopatholgical sciences, while creating another entirely different set. Mention blogging to certain types and you get some extreme reactions. I find at least.
And the numbers thing? False promise, Hugh.
It’s not eyeballs. Get over it.
Tom Peters’ non-Blog!
Hey Hugh beat me to exactly what I was going to say, which is that I’m getting more and more weary of other people blogging on Tom Peters’ blog.
Depends whose eyeballs we’re talking about, Brian
blog: reloaded
everybody speaks about blogging.
wyborcza (a major polish daily newspaper) has
a half page articly about iranian bloggers (stupid one, unfortunately).
bloggers say: blog as if your life depend on it
(also here).
there is no choice, you’ve gotta blog.
p
blog: reaktywacja
wszyscy mówią o blogowaniu.
wyborcza ma artykuł na pół strony o irańskich blogerach
(niestety dość głupi).
blogerzy piszą: bloguj jakby twoje życie zależało od tego
(także tutaj).