Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

This one is for my lurking readers, who don’t post comments on blogs and/or are still thinking about how blogging fits into their business. Even if you don’t personally have one, you should consider blog reading and monitoring a vital part of your business development and ongoing education. (I’ve gotten business just from commenting on others’ blogs.)

Today’s food for thought - via Doc Searls - a selection from Hugh Macleod’s Random Notes on Blogging:

1. The First Rule of Blogging: “Blogs don’t write themselves.” It’s the hardest and most frustrating part of professionally helping others to blog.

3. Blogging is an art, same as any other method of self-expression. Some are better at it than others.

6. Blogging is a great way to make things happen indirectly. I say that all the time, and will KEEP saying it till people finally get it [I’m not holding my breath].

7. Far too much time and energy is spent watching people make money directly off their blogs [e.g. via advertising revenues etc], as opposed to indirectly [e.g. becoming an authority on something, and using said authority to enhance your already-existing business]. I believe the latter [which Doc Searls call The “Because” Effect] is a far more pleasant, effective and likely way to succeed.

MS Note: As Doc says in his post, In fact, I’ll bet that far more economic benefit is caused by blogging than by advertising money coming to bloggers. Or by salaries going to bloggers. Together. By many orders of magnitude. Hear, hear, Doc!

19. For us serious blog evangelists, it’s tempting to think “Everybody should have a blog”. About as tempting as the thought, “Everybody should be able to write well.” And about as realistic.

29. Sixty million blogs. Sixty million business models.

34. Anybody who harbors the idea that Madison Avenue EVEN SLIGHTLY understands the internet is a fool. I’ve been looking for YEARS for evidence to the contrary and simply can’t find any.

35. In this internet-enabled world of ours, Madison’s Avenue’s loss is PR’s gain. Which is why, as a former advertising hack, I follow the Edelman story very closely.

MS Note: Unfortunately, a lot of PR agencies don’t grok blogging either (including, apparently Edelman). Just yesterday I visited a glossy, big-talkin’ agency site in which they were promoting blogging…and the last post they made was in November 2006. (They also touted their web expertise, and their site was way broken in Firefox. Uh-Oh.)

Read More (On Edelman’s problem): Susan Getgood’s Wal-Mart and Another Lesson in Science Fiction

Go. Read the whole list. You don’t have to agree with everything, but you should think about the points. (Heads up: Hugh uses the “f” word frequently.)

P.S. For those of you wondering who Doc and Hugh are - they’re both “A-lister” bloggers (a whole lot of people link to them and they have thousands of readers).

Related Posts:
Why, before sending out your product
I don’t have time to play on the computer.
Gloggers Unite!
I don’t care if only 50 people read my blog.

Tags: A-list blog, a-listers, blogs blogging, business development, web marketing