Should You Kill Your Blog
This is so completely wrong: Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004
Further, text-based Web sites aren’t where the buzz is anymore. The reason blogs took off is that they made publishing easy for non-techies. Part of that simplicity was a lack of support for pictures, audio, and videoclips. At the time, multimedia content was too hard to upload, too unlikely to play back, and too hungry for bandwidth.
Social multimedia sites like YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook have since made publishing pics and video as easy as typing text. Easier, if you consider the time most bloggers spend fretting over their words. Take a clue from Robert Scoble, who made his name as Microsoft’s “technical evangelist” blogger from 2003 to 2006. Today, he focuses on posting videos and Twitter updates. “I keep my blog mostly for long-form writing,” he says.
Twitter — which limits each text-only post to 140 characters — is to 2008 what the blogosphere was to 2004. You’ll find Scoble, Calacanis, and most of their buddies from the golden age there. They claim it’s because Twitter operates even faster than the blogosphere. And Twitter posts can be searched instantly, without waiting for Google to index them.
As a writer, though, I’m onto the system’s real appeal: brevity. Bloggers today are expected to write clever, insightful, witty prose to compete with Huffington and The New York Times. Twitter’s character limit puts everyone back on equal footing. It lets amateurs quit agonizing over their writing and cut to the chase. @WiredReader: Kill yr blog. 2004 over. Google won’t find you. Too much cruft from HuffPo, NYT. Commenters are tards. C u on Facebook?
Paul Boutin (paul@valleywag.com) is a correspondent for the Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag.
Paul Boutin is wrong. Twitter and Facebook have their uses, but they are not replacements for blogs. Saying that they are is like saying that e-mail is a replacement for the post office or UPS.
Blogging is just one tool in the toolbox
Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn can be used to drive traffic to your blog, or work as brief announcements pointing to more in-depth content. Twitter is for chit-chat, your blog is a keynote address to your readers. Paul Stamatiou says:
Generally the great blogs I find are small but have very detailed, niche content - stuff that would have no place on a Facebook Note.
“The odds of your clever [blog post] entry appearing high on the [search engine results] list? Basically zero.”
Basically zero? Not so fast Boutin. It all depends on the content. Niche is king here. Of all the things I’ve ever written on my blog, a post I didn’t really care about when I wrote still brings in new visitors. If you Google for “you need permission to perform this action” you’ll find my post about fixing a Windows Vista quirk. It’s those types of blog posts that I am so grateful of blogs. Now what if everyone took Mr Boutin’s advice and stopped blogging. Google would sure as hell be useless for searching for code errors and tech support. In my experience the best answers are found on blogs.
Amit Chowdhry thinks Boutin is wrong too, saying “Shame on Wired“:
The only reason why HuffPo is number one is because they have 43+ full-time employees, hundreds of guest reporters, $5 million in funding, and knows how to sensationalize politics. You think HuffPo is making these people rich? Highly unlikely. But you can be a blog at the lower levels of Technorati and still make as much as a full-time job could offer. Believe me, I am currently experiencing this.
If you plan on starting a blog, strategize first. When I started my first blog, I just did it to entertain a few friends on Xanga and Blogger. Entertaining your friends doesn’t make you money. Entertaining a broader audience does.
If you don’t have a blog, start one today as practice. You’ll get better with time. I’ve been blogging for about 9 years, but I only figured out the making-money-from-blogging part in the last 2 years.
I actually did not expect an article like this to come out of Wired. As a technology publication that has 11 blogs in their network, I expected a better written article. If you’re going to tell people to stop blogging, have a stronger argument than Jason Calacanis quit, so you should too!
I think Boutin is too worried about being in the Technorati 100, an estimable goal, if you are just looking to sell some ads. If you are looking to get your message out to your audience, perhaps teach something or touch someone, a blog is still the very best tool for it.
Cultivate your internet presence
Obviously, one needs to review their complete social media strategy when they decide whether or not to blog. Some industries and business-models will lend themselves more readily to Facebook or Twitter, but that does not mean that all businesses and bloggers should hang it up. In fact, Chris Brogan recommends blogging for building your business, with a list of ways to do so:
Building Business From Your Blog
You might be trying to make money from your blog directly, perhaps through advertising or affiliate marketing. Or you might be seeking to establish thought leadership and promote consulting opportunities. You might be simply looking to drive even better awareness of a social cause or have a nonprofit or educational motive in mind. In any case, think of “business” to mean “value beyond the blogging itself.”
41. Build conversion opportunities. If you’re selling something directly, think of clever ways to post about it that educate, inform, and encourage a call to action.
42. Make sure your blog design points people towards the action you want them to take.
43. Ask for the sale. If you’re selling something, don’t be shy. Ask for it. Do so in a blog post, or in an ad of your own creation. Be direct and honest about this.
44. Mix free value and additional opportunities. If you’re selling something that’s not unlike what’s available on your blog for free, demonstrate the dividing line. Even consider giving a hint of what’s on the other side.
45. Make it easy to opt in. Like asking for the sale, make sure you help your prospective customers/cleints/partners know how to get into your sales funnel, should they be interested.
46. Make content that sells. If you’re blogging or posting video to promote a business objective, work at building the content such that it drives that end decision. Too 1.0 for you? At least open conversations up about what you’re trying to accomplish.
47. Make it very easy to contact you. Make your About page very clean and easy to read. Put some real human names on the website, and even consider adding a photo, so that people know who they’re addressing. (I say this all the time, but I see so many examples daily of people who could use this advice.)
48. Build relationships with similar blogs and share opportunities. If you’re blogging about real estate, get to know the other real estate bloggers and learn from each other.
49. Give “serving suggestions” on your blog. If you’re blogging a particular kind of offering, is there a way to share what it does, or how you want to be involved?
50. Remember: even if your blog’s main goal is selling, be human, be interesting, be involved. This isn’t the old Internet. We have these nifty social tools that remind us to be human. Let’s use them that way.
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Comments
Good Day. Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
I am from Canada and also now teach English, please tell me whether I wrote the following sentence: “Whenever I feel happy, sad, bored, ecstatic, confused, or whatever, I like to write it down.”
Thanks for the help :D, Upton.
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