I came across a great article today over at c|net.com posted by Daniel Terdiman which discussed Sarah Lacy and her presentation last Saturday in Seattle at the Gnomedex conference. If you would like to read the entire article head you can check it out HERE.
Interestingly enough, the biggest display of ego driven narcissistic personality disorder at the conference was provided by uber-douche-monkey uber-blogger Robert Scoble after he jumped out of his chair and and slothed his fat ass to the back to throw a hissy fit towards Geoff Livingston.
Lacy began the session by posing the theory that in some ways, the PR industry has co-opted blogging–taking advantage of the fact that many bloggers trying to earn a living are so eager for page views that they will post just about anything they are spoon-fed.
I started this and my wife’s blog after I separated from the military. Our goal was to use the blogs as a creative outlet and, if possible, to earn a little extra income to offset the loss of my salary. The last few weeks I’ve been doing intense research on blogging, marketing, promoting, advertising, etc. etc. I’ve come across pages and pages of extremely useful information. However, I noticed that nearly all of the blogging advice I read never once mentioned anything about enjoying your blog or being yourself when you blog. It was all SEO this and Page Rank that. Am I trying to earn a living from blogging? Yes. Am I going to sell myself out to earn a living from blogging? No.
Others agreed, saying that the problem is that while the architecture of blogging is fairly standard, what people do with it can be quite different: Some may write a small personal blog and TechCrunch may be a large media company, but both use similar tools and are therefore lumped together to the detriment of the terminology.
Exactly. Look at the top 10 blog ist on Technorati. Those are NOT blogs. They are corporate websites/webzines. There needs to be a way to separate the corporate from the personal. I scan the corporate blogs for tips. I scan the personal blogs for content and meeting new people and developing the occasional blog crush..*cough* Jenny *cough*.
I will continue to press on with my blog without resorting to link baiting and forcing my family and friends to spam link me on every social network out there so I can move up from my 5.7 millionth ranking on Alexa. I enjoy blogging. I enjoy meeting new people. I enjoy staying home with my daughter full time. Finally, I hope everything works out for us.
The title actually should be “The Shit No One Tells You About Before You Start Your Blog”
No this isn’t going to be some Top XX Reason list as to why you should start a blog about blogging. I simply want to ask a question and get a few things off my chest here.