So, who DOESN’T have a blog?

The Social Media Bible: Chapter 7 The Ubiquitous Blog

Keeping up with all the good information that’s available in blogs could almost be a full time job, because really, who DOESN’T have a blog these days? Yep, “ubiquitous” is a good description:  Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time. (Yahoo dictionary) And, there’s trying to keep up with all the blogs by people who THINK they’re providing good information. That’s another story.

And then, try writing a blog and keeping it up to date. For this class, people will understand if the blog isn’t updated that regularly, but if you’re idea is that your blog might actually be of value to readers…you’d better get ready for a lot of work. According to Lon Safko in Chapter 7 of The Social Media Bible, maintaining a blog requires work and a moderate amount of dedication and effort…boy is that true! Actually, I’d suggest it needs more than a “moderate” amount of dedication. I only read a couple of blogs on a regular basis, but I see excerpts from quite a few more thanks to the several aggregators to which I subscribe. What surprises me the most is how much time these bloggers must spend on OTHER blogs, because invariably there are quoted references to several other blogs within just about every blog I read. I just read this blog entry that gives some good tips for how to manage your time using multiple social media platforms. If I get much further into social media, I’ll probably need to pay attention to some of the ideas in that blog. Thanks to Katya Andresen for this post.

Safko says that although many people may try their hand at blogging, the novelty eventually wears off. He says 200 million former bloggers have already ceased posting to their blogs!(p. 146) Of course, there are many famous blogs, such as that written by Julie Powell in 2002, The Julie/Julia Project, that became a popular movie.

In this chapter, the author once again returns to the idea of citizen journalism:

“In the 20^th century, professional reporters and publishers decided what the news was and determined how the public saw it. Though we might still have some professionals making these decision in the twenty-first century, we now have personal reporters and publishers–more than 50 million of them–who bring our news to us on a daily basis.”(p. 139)

But, do we want that? In my blog about Chapter 3 I addressed this issue with a link to a column by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald. If you didn’t check out that link previously, you should do it now.

I was intrigued by the idea of a Blogger’s Code of Conduct (p. 145), but I can’t figure out how you could ever enforce such a code. The link to the info about Tim O’Reilly’s idea doesn’t work, so I couldn’t get more information about it. I even tried looking at O’Reilly’s own website, but I couldn’t find it there. Oh, well.

I also learned in this chapter about blog specific search engines, that I didn’t know existed. For example, the discussion of Technorati ratings was interesting…I don’t think my blog will ever show up there!

Three random comments from the end of this chapter:

ROI: VistaPrint…I appreciated his reference to the importance of responding to comments on your blog

I think the WordPress guy…Matt Mullenweg…looks very young.

David Risley’s 50 Rapid Fire Tips for Power Blogging…LOTS of info

One final note…I loved the author’s comment about Google Juice (155) : “the goal of this book is to squeeze as much Google Juice as possible out of your social media marketing and communications.”