Comments on: Look-at-me Syndrome

By: Peter Sjoelin

Peter Sjoelin — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:16:29 +0000

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

By: classicalgeek

classicalgeek — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:39:12 +0000

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.

By: Kat

Kat — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:29:36 +0000

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.

By: Chris Anthony

Chris Anthony — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:00:07 +0000

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.