Look-at-me Syndrome
Its a great feeling. You look at your site traffic, people have started to notice you. Your subscriber numbers jumped after a controversial or guest post. You made money off of a product or service you promoted online. Its an amazing high when those things first happen, and the second, third and forth time too. You want to climb to the tallest mountain and shout to everyone about it.
Enthusiasm, proof that your methods work, teaching through your own success, these are all great things. But it is important to walk the line between sharing your success and writing for your own ego. We all dislike people who obviously love to hear themselves talk, we feel the same about people who write for their own glory.
Content Critical puts aside a whole section on writing for your ego instead of your audience. Here are some ways to spot the Egotist writer:
- Constantly use their own traffic as an excuse to post as in leaving out important teaching or sharing points
- Not separating personal details from the blog its okay to let us know you’ve had your first baby, but your awesome golf skills probably don’t even deserve to be a metaphor
- An About Me section that lasts for more than a page Its one thing to post a personal interview, but remember why people come to your site: because you’re awesome or they need info?
- Posting Calendar details as blog entries Unless you are a rockstar, we don’t really care where you went or who you know unless it illustrates a point
- Content that only 10% of your audience understands sure, there are niche blogs who write about math problems normal people can’t comprehend but we aren’t their audience, if their target audience needs a dictionary or a sting theory text book then there’s a problem
Its easy to accidentally write egotistical content. So keep in mind, when sharing your success or personal information make sure it clearly illustrates a point that your readers relate to.
Tags: Ego, enthusiasm, Look, personal details, site traffic
November 6th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Kat, I disagree just about as strongly as I can, and in fact I think the position you’re taking is roughly as egocentric as the bloggers you’re blasting. “I don’t care about you,” you seem to be saying, “I just care about what you can give me. And make it snappy.” More to the point, you’re using emotionally-charged language to say “if you don’t blog the way I like, you’re categorically doing it wrong“.
This is not the way blogs work anymore, and it’s why ghost-written corporate blogs are falling farther and farther to the wayside. Content is not king, although a huge number of people still desperately want it to be. Content and connection must share in equal measure – and the “connection” part of that is the human details that allow us to know that there’s a person writing – and, ultimately, in control of – the posts we’re reading. Whether it’s the golf dates you mock (and @MrBusinessGolf would have a few words to say to you about that), Frank Eliason at @ComcastCares talking about his kids, or Wil Wheaton, actor and writer, randomly posting A-Ha music videos, we need that human touch, or it’s just another high-content, zero-interest collection of words and images.
November 7th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Chris,
I actually really appreciate your take on this topic. I do agree we need the human touch, in fact, I believe it to be essential, but I think that if the blog’s target audience is their client they should be careful to balance that out. To me, if a blog ends up going off topic for too long, readers will look for their information elsewhere. I think Problogger is a perfect example of good balance and I guess that’s what I was trying to get at.
November 11th, 2008 at 11:39 am
It may be true that only ten percent of my audience understands my content (although I do try to give a college-freshman summary of the research). However, I believe that what I post of the research is important for everyone and it’s worth the effort to spend a few minutes trying to understand it and its consequences for a general audience. Of course, I blog for business and because I provide services personally, my about page is perhaps longer than most. In my profession people really do need to know what they’re getting into before hiring someone.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
I agree on a lot of your points in your blog post; however aren’t most blogs and blog systems designed for people who want to share their “personal life” with everyone at the Internet.
In general most “professional” blogs aren’t much more than billboards for companies who want to sponsor the person behind the blog to promote them self and their products to the visitors. Another thing I have noted about “professional” blogs are they often tend to “die or stop developing” after sometime when they haven’t focused on other stuff than the original blog was published for.
Indeed the professional writing is an act of balance between the professional approach and the personal focused approach.
Best wishes,
Peter F.T Sjoelin