Power Laws, Popularity, Authority, A-Lists and the Rest
Robert’s advice to the bloglorn is a bit superficial, focusing on eBay-ish features like adding a picture to your Technorati profile, or catchy headlines. Some of the tips are useful, like using lots of descriptive tags (as that will help search engines index your posts better).
However, here’s my list of what to do to improve your blog, so that your sphere of influence will widen and various rankings will increase. Maybe it will push you into the so-called A-List. [Note: /Message a lowly, lowly 7,379 at Technorati this morning, which is nothing like Robert’s 74, and the best T’rati rank I have ever hit is somewhere around 1200, for the Get Real blog. But still, the techniques I have used to climb from one million plus to 7,379 in the past 35 days (chronicled in the Starting From Zero series) are very different from what Robert is talking about.]
- True Voice — The absolutely, indispensible, central core of all great blogs is authentic and empassioned writing, clearly expressing a consistent and value-based perspective. If you do not possess this, work hard to see how others do it, and emulate their techniques.
- Throw Yourself Into Dialog — Do not write in a corner, looking at the walls. Most great posts are a response to the writing of others. You read something (as I read Robert’s post this morning), it sparks some thoughts, and you add to the thread. Then continue on: see if those involved in the thread respond to your addition to the discussion. Repeat.
- Draw The Line, Over And Over Again — At any given time, successful, engaged bloggers are pursuing a set of themes or topics. These are like an investigative series in conventional journalism, topics that you return to, time and again, successively elaborating your view or arguments. Keeping tabs on the censorship in China, or posting consistently on why certain forms of marketing is immoral, or whatever. State your position and defend it. Howl at the inequities in the world. Shake your finger at the idiots.
- The Big Idea — Every once in a while, work on one of those big posts, that outlines an idea that may have big implications. This could be asking a hard question, or debunking conventional wisdom, or defining the outlines of a new, emerging market. I recently introduced the Conversational Index, which led to a large cascade of commentary and thinking by others. In past years, I have been lucky enough to click that way with other notions, like last fall’s RSS Readering meme. This is a function of invention, and is hard to channel or predict. But the effect, even of just asking a really hard, important question, can be enormous.
- Sharpen Your Pencil, And Then Write. The Polish polymath Ignace Paderewski once said, “before I was a genius I was a drudge.” Writing skills sharpen with use, and the sphere of influence also increases through frequency. You should write — at a minimum — every day.
- Courage — You have to be willing to be called an idiot by some if you intend to be considered an authority by most on the topics you are interested in. Accept the occasional (or even consistent) vitriol from detractors and nay-sayers. If you stand up and say something is great, or pointless, or the most likely trend for the future, you can be sure that there are others that will disagree, and they will be happy to say so. Fine. But you can’t hedge, and middle-of-the-road platitudes or cautious optimism — which may come naturally after a diet of television news and mainstream journo-babble — will simply not break you out of the pack.
- Technology — By all means arm yourself with technology. Learn how search engines work, and do the obvious things. Expressive titles, especially with people’s and products’ names help greatly. Tagging with detailed terms helps search engines and people alike. By all means, make your blog visually pleasing, accessible, and easy to read. Use graphics when appropriate, such as screen shots or diagrams. Link to all the people and stories you reference, and include people discussed as tags.
- Timing Matters — I am not suggesting blowing hot and cold on themes, but rather try to build on stories when they are still new and in people’s thoughts. I saw this post of Robert’s, and I am using it as a springboard to collate a bunch of my thoughts on the topic that he opened. If I had waited a week, a much smaller number of people would read it, because next week this will be one of last week’s hot themes. So timing matters.
- Human Sized Pieces — People are busy, and so your posts should generally not be 20 page dissertations. How long do you expect people to spend reading your thoughts? Can you condense? An occasional “Interesting piece from Robert, check it out!” may be ok, but a steady diet of link-blogging is too low fat for most of us. We need more juice. But only a plateful at a time. Not every thing needs to be a three course meal.
- Respond to comments — People that comment on your blog are most likely those that are most interested in the topics you are writing about (leaving aside your mom, who just comments to make you feel better). Engage them when they come. But never feed the trolls.
I recently fired myself from an Amercian Marketing Series on social media, because I sensed that a high proportion of the folks that were attending the seminars were approaching the whole idea of blogging tactically: “How little of this do I have to do to be doing an adequate job?” My problem is I only want to talk to people who approach the subject strategically, working backward to the various elements from an analysis of excellence. I bet that those who buy in on that approach will at least find an echo of their own thoughts in these recommendations, and the rest will simply think I am a monomaniacal windbag with too much time on my hands.
