Milestone!What defines a blog? Is it a diary, a chronicle, an aggregator, a collection of work culled by it's creator? After a decade of keeping a personal weblog in one form or another, I've had an epiphany. I've collected a bunch of thoughts and I'm spewing them out here and now, for all to see.
Blogging can be stressful for some. Bloggers are "always on." The deadline is now. Competition for traffic is intense. Every second I can hold you on my site instead of Joe or Sally's blog improves my PR and the chance you might link back to me or click on one of my ad$!
Then, there are those who argue that blogging's run is over. They said that in '05, that Vlogging was in. It is not. They said that again when twitter came along. But microblogging found its own spot.
I almost dumped the entire blogroll, but decided instead to keep those bellwether blogs and bloggers that have strong presence in that they have impacted the blogosphere, leaving their unique marks in Cyberia, the Digiverse, or whatever you might call it.
Is a blogroll neccessary in 2010?Maybe you’re blogging to promote your creative work, to build a tribe, to create your brand, to put your voice out there. This is all well and good. But to accomplish these things you need to figure out what to blog about that will actually engage an audience….not to mention yourself. If all you’re doing is blogging about yourself or your book, you’ll run out of steam pretty quickly. There’s also this factor to consider: nobody really cares.
With blogrolls, you have the problem of deciding who to add and who to deny. If your blogroll is huge, your readers and those you link to will perceive your blogroll links as having little value, because it seems you’ll add anybody.
On the other hand, a small blogroll means some people won’t make the cut. If another blogger adds you to their blogroll, but you didn’t add them to yours, they may feel a bit put out. Reciprocity is a powerful psychological force in human relationships. If other bloggers add you to their blogrolls, they feel like you owe them the same as a return favor.
Having a blogroll means you have to deny link requests and people will want to know why. “Because your blog sucks” is probably not what you want to tell them. Far easier to simply not have a blogroll at all, because then you just say “I don’t have a blogroll,” and that’s that. [Source]
Keeping up appearances on twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media is a big time killer. I'm not saying that spending time on social media is a waste, but don't let it take away all of your time! Go interact with the REAL world, which is rapidly spinning by all around you, because if you miss IT you will be left incomplete and unsatisfied, no matter how many posts you've posted, friends you've friended or tweets you've tweeted!
Entrecard is another time-sucker, vacuuming up precious moments... drop ECs wisely and with a PURPOSE in mind! Have a goal, an agenda. If you are dropping just to get to "300 per day," you are LOST!
In a recent discussion on Facebook, a person was complaining about being tagged in a picture that their physical likeness was not in. (Happens to me all the time!) Aldon Hynes explored this... I left a comment on Aldon's blog ::: Unfortunately, my experience with this "tagging" business has been unpleasant. There are a few users on Facebook who exploit this "tagged in a photo" feature to promote their own causes and manifestos. "UNCLE!"
Tags: definition of a blog, blog, defined
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