John Scalzi is my hero of the day. I have read only one post from his blog and based only on this post entitled, "How to Irritate and Annoy People in the Name of Blogging" I am in worship mode - instant subscribe. I love his passion. This is a post for the ages.
He calls out one of the many “how to get more people to read your blog!” posts that are always surfacing online and how they just plain miss the point - that what makes blogging and social media different is just that - it is social communication.
Final word - ya gotta give to get. It's a relationship! Not a win-win, zero sum game.
As blogging grows up and becomes more of a professional marketing channel for companies and people alike, it is easy to look for quick answers and strategies. Sure there are things you can do to be a smarter blogger but there are no shortcuts - creating interesting authentic content is hard and call me naive but people find the good stuff and send it around.
My thoughts on the original post:
Some of the advice the bloggers give is ok in context. Penelope Trunk (a fav of mine) suggests "be interesting". It is the prescriptive language of the article and how it lacks soul that bothered me. What made my skin really crawl--along with John-- was the heavy use of corporate speak. God - I thought that bloggers and social media were going to evolutionize corporate speak not the other way around. Finally -the most important point is mentioned in passing at the end as a nugget:
Jay White | DumbLittleMan.com - This is going to sound VERY generic but there is no better marketing than writing great articles. I would simply use that time to write.
Jay - my man, you are not dumb, not dumb at all.
[Parental warning for the - John post uses the word fuck a lot, so sensitive ears have been warned]
[Note: Thanks to Kevin for the Twit to the link. i added the photo from a recent conference booth - similar theme]
