Scott, at Dangerously Irrelevant, addressed the issue of bloggers who get upset when nobody reads or comments. And some of the comments seem to agree that blogging isn’t necessarily to create an audience or a reaction. I agree to some extent, but blogging isn’t just about having fun. If it were, why don’t we all just type our thoughts into our favorite word processing software and keep our thoughts to ourselves? We write for an audience. We want our thoughts to be heard. But after several months of extensive blog reading, here’s what I’ve realized about successful bloggers.
1. Successful blogs aren’t just blogs. The people who have blogs that are popular and influential are not just blogging. They have made their blog because they are passionate about something that they’ve already been doing. Their blogs are extensions of who they are. And they’ve been testing their ideas in other venues before they blog about it.
Do you think Scott McLeod or Seth Godin started a blog because he wanted people to notice him? He was already noticed — in a more local way. His colleagues, his classmates, his community, and his family found him valuable. The blog was just a natural way to share his value with other educators, marketers, readers, and house wives. Don’t just blog. Find a local expression of your passions and invest your time there. Then blog about it.
2. You have more influence with people you meet face-to-face. Let’s “face” it. You don’t really trust people you meet…unless you are: a) introduced by a friend that you trust, b) you meet in a context that you trust (church, work, conference) c) you realize within a few minutes that this person has many of your same interests. You probably read several blog posts or articles or even books before you really “trust” someone you’ve never met. Why do you expect your audience to treat you any differently?
Trust is the key component in today’s world of easy information and clever marketing. At another blog post at Weblogg-ed, A.T. Wyatt comments:
“I think these trends [referring to marketing trends that seem altruistic] are becoming very pervasive because it is extremely difficult to separate the agendas, particularly on the internet where ‘free’ almost always indicates some type of trade-off, whether or not you were aware of it.”
It is much easier to build trust, relationships, a readership, a followership, or inspire change with people you already know. Don’t start blogging until you’ve started working in your own community to make changes there. Then, you’ll have something to blog about.
There. I’m done. I’m off to consider how I’m going to catch up on grading all those papers I assigned before spring break.
