There is no blog science

Here

When asked a while ago what blogging was, caught on the spot I fell over the default definition – it’s a platform for publishing online. Yawn. It’s a tired old techie mantra. It’s more than that.

A blog is opportunity. It’s that lull in a bubbling chatter. An open space to interject on topic you are passionate about. There are no ten steps to blogging nirvana. No secrets that people jealously hide. There are just fingers, keys and ideas. Sure there are tools you can use to measure and market, but they are just wrenches.

For every goldrush there are Promising Men. Creatures that promise you the world and all its daughters for a slice of the action. Oh look, a guide here, an ebook there. Here’s a podcast. Let’s go on a course.

I’m still shocked at the amount of self-professed blogging and social meijit experts still blog at Blogspot. Social media is just places where people converse. So you’re a professional observer of conversations but your blogging outlet lives in the Trailer Park of forgotten blogs. On a subdomain of a free blogging service.

Or how about the number that advocate misusing blog comments to document socially buzzworthy Q&A communications to boost pageviews and mangle conversation. If you want to open-source your mailbox, open it all up. Nursing long strings of visitor-gulping comments to give nanny-stated advice to people who blindly trust you misrepresents the integrity of those that happily gift advice on blogs without jealously sucking on search engine juice.

This is not to stamp on outlets for inspiring people to dip their toes in, rather it recognises the inalienable fact that at the end of the day blogging is opportunity and that greasy palms are everywhere. Ideas out in the wild, on the web. You can sell me a hundred ways to hold a pencil, but I still have to draw.

December 12th, 2008 at 11:58 am • Filed in Blogging, Geekery



Comments

11 Comments to “There is no blog science”

  1. Russell McQuillan Says:
    December 12th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    Indeed the only people who actually made serious money from the gold rush were the people selling the shovels.

    I like this post, it struck a cord and I am proud to say I moved away from blogspot last month and my traffic has spiked. wooohooo (more features to!)



  2. JL Pagano Says:
    December 12th, 2008 at 12:42 pm

    “I’m still shocked at the amount of self-professed blogging and social meijit experts still blog at Blogspot.”

    Is this a new realm of the genre? Blog Snobbery? Are you saying it’s only “fingers, keys and ideas” provided those fingers only push certain keys to express their ideas?

    I’m not in a position to DEFEND blogspot per se, but it’s what I started with, it’s what I’m comfortable with, and unless some kind of Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus thing takes place, I’d like to stay with it for the sake of archive continuity. But that’s just me, even though I’m anything BUT a self-professed blogging and social meijit expert.



  3. Alexia Says:
    December 12th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    @JL I’m asking why people bandying their business as professional social meijits are blogging on Blogspot. Are you selling a professional service on your Blogspot blog?

    I’m asking why “consultants” charge top Euro to customers promising expertise to but in the same breath freeload on a BS or other spots without a domain.

    Are you advocating ways for businesses to boost their brand? These guys are. So then you have to question why do they stay there. Are they are too lazy to jump to .com or too technically inept to move? A yes to either of these would have me seriously questioning their consulting chutzpah. Or maybe that’s just me.

    Blogspot is a great way to get people blogging if technology is a barrier. There is no snobbery implied. However, if you are a consultant on something techie, then you should have your own spot. Or at least know someone that can help set one up for you. Right?



  4. JL Pagano Says:
    December 12th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    I had a feeling there was more to this post than met the eye and you duly pointed it out to me.

    When it comes to businesses, then I totally agree that using blogspot is the height of laziness.

    My humblest apologies.



  5. Dan Sullivan Says:
    December 12th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    I would tend to agree that people selling a service that directly relates to this area should have their own space. Though I’d think a good many people would be quite surprised that some who do have their own space are selling their expertise while buying others to fix up a WordPress template for them. That’s just trading behind a façade of competence isn’t it?

    For myself, I will most probably move to something else in the new year but for now blogspot does what I need it to do. And I suspect for many that is why they haven’t moved. It does what they need it to for now. It’s like the old transit van, it may not be too sexy on the road but if it does the job and is reliable why trade up just to look good? That is a sign for me of valuing presentation over substance.



  6. Alexia Says:
    December 12th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    “That’s just trading behind a façade of competence isn’t it?”

    Depends entirely on what they are trading, right?

    “For myself, I will most probably move to something else in the new year but for now blogspot does what I need it to do. And I suspect for many that is why they haven’t moved. It does what they need it to for now. It’s like the old transit van, it may not be too sexy on the road but if it does the job and is reliable why trade up just to look good?”

    Bit of a contradiction here. If it does what you want, why move at all? Unless you agree that moving off Blogspot and to a new domain imparts a veneer of professionalism.

    “That is a sign for me of valuing presentation over substance.”

    It’s not about presentation over substance. It’s about how people who advocate brand awareness fail to execute on the essentials – that in the online space, style and substance are inextricably linked. No snobbery there. We are all visual animals.



  7. Keiron Says:
    December 12th, 2008 at 5:53 pm

    “There are just fingers, keys and ideas.”

    That for me, is quote of the week – thank you!



  8. Dan Sullivan Says:
    December 12th, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    “For myself, I will most probably move to something else in the new year but for now blogspot does what I need it to do. And I suspect for many that is why they haven’t moved. It does what they need it to for now.”

    I don’t see how there is any contradiction given that I used ‘for now’ twice in the above paragraph. If I change what I want to do then I may change what I use to do it. You use the tool that fits. Having one’s own domain is a good idea but I wouldn’t regard it as a requirement to order for me to take someone’s opinion seriously. It can help but it’s not a requirement, you are saying it is a requirement. There we differ and “style and substance are inextricably linked” hmm they may be linked but one does not indicate the other. There are lots of stylish people with not an ounce of substance. And people who lack style who are very substantial.



  9. icedcoffee | words » links 13th december 2008 Says:
    December 13th, 2008 at 7:16 am

    [...] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Click here to find out what an RSS feed is. Thanks for visiting, Phil!Give yourself a voice. Start a blog. It’s easy. [...]



  10. Alexia Says:
    December 13th, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    “There we differ and “style and substance are inextricably linked” hmm they may be linked but one does not indicate the other. There are lots of stylish people with not an ounce of substance. And people who lack style who are very substantial.”

    Aren’t we talking about branding here for professional services? Nothing to do with people.



  11. Robert Synnott Says:
    December 18th, 2008 at 6:36 am

    I don’t actually get the anti-Blogger (blogspot) thing. I’ve used WordPress, Movable Type and Blogger in that order, and of the three, Blogger has been by far the least trouble. I don’t have to maintain the damn thing, or feed it frequent security updates, its spam filtering works properly (I found WordPress’s very unreliable and Movable Type’s overzealous), and it’s consistently fast. The other two major free services (WordPress.com and LiveJournal) show obnoxious ads and delight in adding ‘features’ like that terrible Snapz Preview thing. And I don’t really want to pay for TypePad.

    Admittedly, I do use a custom domain, but I probably wouldn’t be except that I had it anyway. Now, of course, I’m not a blogging expert, I’m just a programmer (part of the reason I disliked WordPress; the code is not a pretty sight) who occasionally wants to write about nonsense on the Internet. However, I can’t really see that Blogger would be inadequate for many people, and in fact I suspect it would suit most people better than the other big options. No fuss, no mess, and no significant downtime since 2006.

    As a matter of interest, does Blogger on a custom domain rank as well as, say, Movable Type on your own domain? If not, why not? :)



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