More Important Things to Write About than Blogging
March 3rd, 2006 by jtony
First of all, I want to post a link here. A very important link to a blog that I believe is the epitome of what blogging is and should be all about:
Daniel Steinberg’s “Dear Elena”
Warning: You can pretty much expect to shed tears over this blog. It is one of the saddest, heart shredding things I’ve ever seen, and it is also one of the most beautiful. I’ve wanted to comment on his writing since Daniel started this blog, but I’ve been so frozen by both the beauty and grief that I’ve been unable to say anything. It has much more important things to say than anything I’ve written so far in this blog, and will change the way you look at your loved ones, so go there and read it. If you want a distraction afterward, feel free to come back here.
Also, this post gets mighty close to a rant, which I have sworn off on this blog. However, since it is going to be the last post of its kind on this blog, I’m making a slight exception.
So there, I’ve put up an example of what I say blogging should be. Is it the only way to write a blog? No. In fact, it is blogging of the most extreme sort. Still, that level of love and passion pouring out of those words is what I’d like to see more often in my own and other people’s blogs.
Which is why after this post I intend on avoiding meta-blogging. I intend to stop blogging about blogging, or worse, blogging about bloggers who blog about blogging.
A few posts ago I wrote about Pro vs. Am in blogging, and what it means to “turn pro”, and I’m not sure I was a clear there as I wanted to be. What I was really saying is that the best blogs are about a passion of some sort first, and about finding an audience second. In fact, finding an audience shouldn’t really be part of the equation, because I truly believe that if you write or draw or design or even critique with passion, your audience will find you.
Earlier today I saw a blargument (an argument between bloggers on their blogs… isn’t it great how I keep inventing these words?) about whether or not blogging was just about “getting more traffic” to your site. I don’t want to rant, but what a stupid, waste of electrons argument! Seriously dumb.
Yes, blogging can be just about getting traffic to a site, but I think that is bad, passionless blogging for the most part. It is corporate marketing blogs with spin by marketing directors rather than “Naked Conversations“. If you are worried about the traffic, you will muzzle yourself one way or another. “Pros”, it seems to me, have to be worried about the traffic, because that’s where their bread AND butter is. However, the smart pros remember that the whole reason they got that traffic in the first place was the passion wrote about before “turning pro”.
For me, blogging has to be about something more. A huge number of people argue about “content”, and I even throw the word around once in a while. The problem with the word “content” is that it really came around with radio and television. The whole point of television from the start (at least when RCA got involved anyway) was to gain an audience for advertising. The “Content” was simply thrown in to keep you watching more ads. The ads were not just the bread, but the meat and lettuce, too. The “Content” was just a condiment to make the ads taste better.
I’m afraid that many “pros” are starting to get the same view, and I’m afraid that it will begin to rot the “bloggerdome” from the inside out.
Even I think about the fact that I’m linking to these other folks blogs here, and that alone may adjust/increase traffic here (especially if they link back) and I hate that I am even thinking that way. If I wanted to be totally un-hypocritical I’d not link to them, but that wouldn’t be fair to them because then you wouldn’t get to hear their words directly.
Anyway, the whole argument is stupid because Blogging is just a way of communicating, like a book. A book’s purpose is not to gain readers. It is a method of transfering information. A blog is the same thing. There are tools to gain more traffic for blogs, just like there are tools to gain more readers for particular books, but that isn’t what a book is.
Today there was a post by Nick Wilson on Performancing criticizing “Blog Snobs” : the sort of folks who say “you should blog this way” or “blogging means that”. The thing that strikes me is that Performancing is constantly talking about the way you “should” blog.
For instance, just a few days ago, Nick wrote “Why Micropayments and Donation Biz Models SUCK” about Jason Kottke’s decision not to try the donation route this year, and not to move ahead with a subscription model either, is good news because “now we can drop that silly line of reasoning”. The main problem I have with that is that Kottke didn’t fail. He made almost $40,000 using his donation model, just for blogging. It isn’t a huge income, but when you consider he only pushed the donation drive for the first 6 weeks, and he made most of that money in that time, I think it shows a great success. Just because Kottke chose not to go the same route this year does not show that the idea is a failure.
Now, it may seem that I shouldn’t care because I don’t have a donation box on my blog (and don’t plan to), but I feel that there absolutely has to be some sort of alternative to an ad or corporate sponsor based framework. Yes, I believe there are writers out there who should be paid JUST FOR BLOGGING!
Anyway, what it points to is that while Nick calls others “Blog Snobs” he also tells folks how they should or shouldn’t blog, and it seems to me that, by definition, that would make him one, too. In fact, it makes me one as well. Yes, I am a Blog Snob. I think that Blogging about Bloggers who Blog about Blogging, or having an argument over what a blog is all about is stupid, wasteful, and boring, especially when there are people out there writing about things that are so much more important, like Elena’s Birthday, and how we should be celebrating for her.
You just spent 1,112 words telling us not to blog about blogging. Well done.
You’re being a little dismissive, don’t you think Brian? Be careful or they’ll start thinking you’re a Blog Snob too
Actually, that isn’t really what I said. It isn’t blogging about blogging that’s the problem, in my eyes. It is the blogging without passion for anything but the tool and forgetting what the tool can do.
Hugh Macleod wrote in Gaping Void a short while back about how Blogs are like Hammers, which is a really good metaphor, I think. If all carpenters got too caught up in examining and showing off the hammer, nothing else would get built. Sure, there’s room for some passionate hammer collectors out there, but when too many carpenters start worrying more about the hammer than the nail they’re driving, things are bound to start to go awry (if you don’t mind the stretched metaphor).
I’m actually very interested in hearing your thoughts on the real meat of what I’m talking about… about the possibility that so much concentration about tool technique might get in the way of the quality of the tool’s products. Or, to bring it back to blogs, that so much concentration on making the marketing aspect of blogging extra important, extra effective, that the quality of what is actually in the blogs might suffer.
I wish I could find the article, but I read a bit of one today that went something like “Can your best writers hurt your blogging network?” That just seems so wrong to me. Thinking too much about whether or not your blog post is the perfect length for bringing in traffic rather than worrying about whether your blog is the perfect length to get your point across.
I’ll admit, Brian, that I tend to be a little wordy. I write fast, and I don’t always pare down to the bare essentials. I like language too much.
I might suggest, though, that you might spend more time digesting the words rather than counting them.
Really, I’d much rather hear your real thoughts, Brian. I realize that you might take offense to my saying the argument was stupid (thought I want to make sure you understand that I do not consider you or Steve Rubel are stupid… quite the contrary, actually), but instead of just dismissing what I said, give me a real response to chew on. I wrote the post because I want to expand the scope of blogging for fear of it being narrowed. your thoughtful response would help that expansion, as I value what you would say.
Sorry, I was just having a bit fun. I liked what you wrote, so I apologize if it came across as dismissive. I’ve got one of those senses of humor that constantly gets me in trouble.
Ultimately, I think you’re right in many many ways, but my perspective does not separate “marketing” from “content” or “value” creation. To me, they are one in the same, but I understand how the message can get split up and the important half lost.
I don’t consider what me and Steve had a real argument for two reasons. 1. he didn’t read my report, so we were not “arguing” about facts, and 2. he was likely just throwing me a PR bone anyway.
No problem Brian! I understand how often humorous remarks are lost through internet translation. As much as I hate using smilys, they definitely have their vital uses
Also, the irony is not lost on me that, in a way, I spent all those words blogging about other bloggers who are blogging about blogging just to say that I didn’t like to do it (and am still doing it here in these comments).
Thanks also for the kind comments about what I wrote. It is just some stuff that’s been on my mind a lot lately and I’ve seen so many people writing around the edges of it in different ways, and then I saw Dear Elena. It just all gelled for me and I decided then and there what was most important to me, and I want to bring out that kind of passion again. If you haven’t read Dear Elena, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Be warned that it would take a heart of diamond not to be moved to tears.
As for the “argument”, it was clear to me that it was at the very least professional, and I was never worried that one of you would call the other out for a duel or anything. It just grabbed my attention, probably due to the passion with which you both write
The Dear Elena blog made me cry like a baby at 5:00 am, the day after he released it. I actually commented on the first post offering my condolences (under Brian, no site reference out of respect). I have two children myself, and when they woke up two hours later I *did* hug them and tell them how much I loved them. Every day since, too.
I should have used a smiley. Maybe it was an accident, or maybe I just felt that it was unfair that you were comparing a parent’s loss of his daughter to people just trying to earn a living via blogging to support themselves and their own children. The content managment and publishing software may be the same, but that’s where the comparison ends. Blogging is just like life… there’s personal, and there’s business, and they are not the same thing (nor should they be).
take care -
Brian
Your point about my comparison of the two types of blogging is a great one, and is an aspect I hadn’t thought of. You are right, it is unfair to compare day-to-day pro blogging to something so extraordinarily poignant. I really did choose something particularly extreme. In my head it was just still so big, particularly after the birthday post, and the two were fully juxtaposed in my head.
In reality I’d have been happy if folks just skipped straight to Dear Elena and didn’t read the rest of my post, wordy as it was. I could have just posted a link there and been don, and perhaps that would have been the most humble thing for me to do.