(Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes)
There’s been a lot of… discussion… lately concerning this whole blogging thing. It’s a regular brouhaha. All this fiery discussion concerning blogging about blogging… it amuses me that I agree with most it, but I don’t draw the same conclusions.
What I see are a large number of people for whom writing is an essential part of their learning process (as it is for me). Speaking for myself, I’m compelled to write, and my publication record, both “blogging” and academic, reflects my writing compulsion.
I don’t believe I’m unique.
I see two things which offer stupendous opportunity:
1. All these people who are the butt of such complaints are self-motivated, and they are self-training. For better or worse, every single person who writing the same old recycled pap us old timers screech so loudly about is a motivated person for whom the material provides little frissons of revelation, each and every blog post. Are they wasting their time? I don’t know. When they’re writing, they aren’t watching TV. That’s a good thing.
2. Blogging as a medium is in it’s infancy. I have a very long post about this brewing, so that’s all I’ll say about that now. I can say, from living in San Francisco, that the amount of technology about to be unleashed on the blogging world is mind boggling. If anything, we need more bloggers blogging about blogging. Yes, there is a lot of same-old, same-old out there, but if spend more than 10 minutes in my RSS feed, I will learn something new, and often something I can take action on pretty fast. Which leads me to…
The real work is just starting, even in the blogging niche. So many questions remain unanswered: How do we measure ROI, for real? Which “outposts” provide the highest ROI? Over what period of time? How do we manage these properties so their long term asset value increases? In a world where content is free, what really constitutes value? Is there room for a “middle class,” or is success online going to be (stay?) divided into the massively wealthy versus the poverty stricken? I don’t see these questions adequately addressed.
At the moment, WordPress runs 8% of the internet. I don’t think it’s out of the question to see WordPress serving 50%-60% of the internet, a 2-3 fold doubling from it’s current value. That’s certainly Matt Mullenweg’s stated intention, which was available for through the WordPress dashboard RSS feed for every, single WordPress blogger. I can’t be the only person who watched that.
8% to 50%. That’s a lot of opportunity.
So I’m happy to go right on doing what I’m doing (teaching and consulting), and happy to acquire as readers, customers and friends all those still interested in learning the craft, despite being told not to.
For readers who are really new, if you’re starting from scratch, bear in mind it “historically” takes a couple of years to get going on the internet. And that was then. It might take more than 2 years now. While I’m at it (and I’m tipping my hand again), what you do on your blog is public, successes and failures both. Expect success to be ignored and failure to be ridiculed, and you won’t be disappointed. Set your personal goals and ignore both.
I see huge growth and opportunity coming down the pike too, both in terms of the technology and the sheer number of people who have yet to set up blogs and websites.
When we spend a lot of time online, we lose track of what’s going on offline. It seems that no matter where I go offline, when people find out what I do online, I’m asked if I’d consider providing personal assistance (paid) or workshop-type training to set-up or improve a blog.
If I’m being approached for help by local small business folks and entrepreneurs-in-waiting without doing any advertising other letting people know that I ‘blog about blogging,’ this tells me there is a mighty big wave of people headed our way.
I could listen to all those online voices who tell me there’s no point in ‘blogging about blogging’ anymore, but I prefer to listen to the voices asking for my help.
Jean Sarauer´s last post ..Newbie Interview Tips From My Virgin Interview
Jean, I went to a Lunch 2.0 meeting last week sponsored by Xobni.com and didn’t have any problem with anyone misunderstanding or ridiculing what I was doing. Instead, people asked for business cards, and this is a sophisticated and experienced group.
I agree with you, I believe there is a huge wave coming. And people are going to want – need – to know more than how to set up a blog and install plugins. They will need help with writing, ROI, promotion, management, a large raft of associated tasks.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..WordPress Case Study- Gran Canaria Travel Guide
I wonder if everybody is blogging – no matter what they are blogging about, who will be reading?
Ralph´s last post ..My Path Continues – A New Job
Ralph, vastly more people read and do nothing, than actually get the work done or even comment. Darren Rowse notes he gets something like 1% of his readers commenting.
It’s like saying: “Someone sung a song on the radio. So nobody should sing songs on the radio any more.”
Most of the readership hasn’t yet signed on.
Further: people, even “pros” seem to treat “blogging” as a sort paper-on-a-screen, when in fact it’s a distinctly different medium whose properties have barely been tapped. The stupendously ambitious and way-too-far-ahead-of-its-time Xanadu Project is still hobbled by lack of technology, although Mediawiki has made progress with transclusions. The best I can do with transclusion on WordPress is defining custom shortcodes to insert text in appropriate places. The “Hat Tip” I use is similar to this.
I don’t have time to soften this up with links at the moment, believe me, the future of this medium is still, well, mostly in the future.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..I want to be an Olympic blogger Part I
@Ralph, I used to think that *producing* a lot of content made me less interested in *consuming* other content. Turns out that’s not the case at all, I just want to consume *really cool* content. I imagine that the more we all write, the more we all are gonna be motivated to write better, cooler stuff.
Sean Neprud´s last post ..A Short and Irreverent Art History- Part 3
Sean, I have around 100 draft articles in my WordPress posts queue, all of which require more research, because I haven’t seen the material covered adequately anywhere else.
This doesn’t include a raft of articles elsewhere.
I just don’t get anyone who says they don’t have anything interesting to write about. I could definitely put them to work.
Like this: measure the reach, influence, ROI (defined however you like) of the last article you tweeted. Write it up stepwise so we can follow what you did. I’ve never seen anyone write this up. I’m sure someone has, but I read a couple hundred blogs in this “circle,” and I haven’t seen it yet.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Basic Blogging Business Bookkeeping – Don’t Do what Danielle Did
Blogs are the wave of the future. Especially for promoting a product or business. What other way can you reach out to a endless amount of potential customers or people that you want to influence for free.