January 8, 2006
creative destruction
Jeff from Texas states the obvious: Thomas the Savile Row tailor hasn’t been updating his blog often enough.
So I write in the comments:
Tom is REALLY busy these days, thanks to the blog. So he doesn’t have as much time to post new material as often he would like.
When you have dozens of customers waiting for their suits to be finished, THE LAST THING they want to see is you spending lots of time online.
A lot of bloggers like to write about “Creative Destruction”. But rarely do they include the creative destruction of their own blogging in the equation.
Am I the only one who sees the paradox?
[NOTE TO SELF:] My Alexa rankings are at an all-time high. What’s the deal with that?
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Paradoxical indeed.
It could also be a post-hoc justification for actually running out of interesting things to say.
In any event, does this translate to “exploit the blogosphere until you get a business under way, then move on”?
I wouldn’t say Tom is running out of things to say. But he’s a busy man. C’est la vie.
Oh, and, we haven’t EVEN BEGUN exploiting the blogoshere to its full potential. Just you wait
You might have an influx of Alexa users coming to your site, Hugh. I know I am one, but I also know that my visits alone could not affect things that much!
well i think it’s just because your site was mentioned at http://www.johnandjohn.nl/ (episode 485 — link “under” image with comic)
Busy is busy, but…
It sounds like the EC blog really helps T’s business, so shouldn’t he *make* time for it?
You don’t have to post a dissertation on the history of the cuff every time. But if you’re counting on the blog readership to help get you more customers in the future, I’d say you ignore it at your peril.
(Funny, I just reread that and I’m not sure whether I mean “you” plural or “you” tell-this-to-Thomas or “you” Hugh-the-blog-guy.)
It’s a fine balance, Frosty. Too little blogging, like you say, is perilous [Thomas concurs with that as well]. Too much blogging annoys the already-paying customers.
I know one tailor [who shall remain nameless] who spent a lot of time marketing himself via hanging out in online tailoring forums. It totally backfired on him, because he was spending so much time in there, but not delivering his suits fast enough. Then his customers would come into the forums and start airing their grievences.
And then the feeding frenzy would begin…
At the end of the day, the customers have the priority.
It may be a cyclical thing, also… which maybe isn’t evident if you’re only on the first go-round. Blog like mad, become insanely busy, stop blogging to focus on work, then later, return to blogging to bring in the next wave of clients or launch the next product/project.
For instance, I’m guessing that when you launch the shirts, there will be at least some upswing in posts to get that idea out there.
Myself, that’s how it seems to go. I blog fairly steady for a while until something hits and sends me away from the laptop to make a bunch of stuff. When the work is done, time to hit the keyboard again. repeat as neccesary.
This seems harsh criticism to me — his posts are never anything but informative and passionate — and I’d rather have one of those every week or so than a myriad of trivial posts. There is nothing more likely to stop me reading a blog than my aggregator telling me I’ve missed 40 or so posts in the past week!
Not that this is necessarily the truth as far as Thomas is concerned, but a lot of successful people stop doing the thing that made them successful the second they are being successful.
’I’ve worked hard, so now I am entitled to reap the benefits, right?‘
Wrong. To stay where you are you need to carry on doing what you have been doing to get where you are in the first place.