I am coming to a firm conclusion that unless you are in the top 1% of the tech blogosphere no-one is listening to you – at all.
Sure those of us working our way up the blogging ranks have our faithful readers – and thank goodness for every single one of you – but when it comes to dealing with businesses and to some degree that 1% of big name bloggers we don’t exist. The only time that might change is if you write something totally outrageous or insulting at which point you might get a moment of their attention. All those times you write nice things or even posts that are directly related; and linked, to something they have talked about don’t expect any reaction because chances are that they are too important to even make a comment.
A case in point is regarding a post I had on Mashable last Friday about sponsorships and it being a viable way for bloggers to monetize their content. In that post and in a follow up one here on WinExtra I used NewsGator as a prime example of my points I was trying to make. Now on Thursday I emailed Nick Bradbury who is the author of FeedDemon which is owned by NewsGator for his reaction on the sponsorship idea and at the same time I also emailed NewsGator through one of their contact email addresses for their thoughts.
Within at least twenty minutes I had a response from Nick which I then quoted in part in both of the posts. The response from NewsGator? I’m still waiting.
Would Michael Arrington or Robert Scoble have been ignored this way if they had contacted NewsGator and asked the same question? I would be willing to bet my next years AdSense pennies that they would have gotten a reply within .. oh .. let’s be generous and say … umm .. ten minutes. On top of that I bet they would have gotten a sponsorship offer to go with it.
In another instance I wrote a post about one of our bigger name bloggers who appeared to be having a hard time finding any inspiration to spark his creative juices. In the post I made a few suggestions that I believed would provide more than enough inspiration to be able to kick start him and even though even a comment from this blogger would have been nice I knew that the likelihood of this happening was next to nil. I know that that if someone like Doc Searls or Stowe Boyd had written the same post this blogger would have been in there like a dirty shirt.
So what is the take away from all this?
Simple – keep on writing the way you are and treasure every single reader you have but don’t expect anything beyond that point. Keep slugging away doing what you are doing and try to keep that passion for what you are doing alive but never ignore those folks that have followed you from the beginning.
While NewsGator may not care if I exist I know there are companies out there who will answer my emails and it is those companies that will always have priority as I grow. I have an ever growing circle of bloggers who I know that will always come first on my list and whose opinion I value more than the 1%’ers.
This isn’t meant to be whiney post even though some will see at such. If anything it is more of a note of encouragement to bloggers outside of the 1% that even though it can be discouraging sometimes when we feel like nobody is listening the fact is that we do have an audience. It is that audience that has grown in size as we have gotten better at our craft and it is that audience that will always be the most important one so never forget them.
And for the 1%’ers .. it might be easy to ignore us now but it is always a good thing to remember that there are more of us than you and being ignored can work both ways.
Conversation Tags: blogging, bloggers, ranking
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And I look forward to the building of galaxies as I am sure you are to.
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I'm also not sure what the "Top 1%" is.
FWIW, my readership has been running from a few hundred to a (very) few thousand a day since 2000. There were that many when I was #16 at Technorati, and again when I dropped to #600, and then when my URL changed and I had no "authority" at all and had to start all over again.
I just checked my stats, and the blog had about 3700 visits today (a lot for me), and just under 37000 for the whole month. I believe Scoble gets as many in a few hours.
But I don't care and I never did. I blog mostly to share ideas that might or might not catch, and to lend some original thought to ideas others bring up. I don't do it for the money, or the strokes, or for the highly conditional and narrow recognition it brings.
Even the writing I do at Linux Journal, which is for money, is done without *any* mindfulness about whether or not it's commercial. In fact I think most of my writing there is about the least commercial stuff we run.
As for what's on my radar, it's mostly topics. The feeds that matter to me are topical ones. And they change all the time.
Not sure where I'm going with this, except to say that the "%" caste system, at least in blogging, is silly and wrong and more a matter of perception than reality.
It's also still early. We're about 5 nanoseconds into the Net's Big Bang and mostly have hot gas and light elements. No galaxies yet. Long way to go.
Cheers,
Doc
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The fact you knew to stay and respond to replies shows you knew there will be some. That's a good thing, and I'm particularly pleased to see a blogger who obviously values the conversation resulting from what he's written. I hardly read a post of yours that goes unnoticed and without reply.
Those of us who suffer disbelief when a post attracts even a single comment agree with your assessment that we aren't anywhere near the radar beam of the A-listers. We do try to attract their attention now and then. Not because we think that they'll become regular subscribers, but because of the generated value of their attention. I feel like a playwright talking about the critics after opening night. It's true, though. If we can just once receive "the nod", an acknowledgment, our credibility will benefit. If you're blogging on a topic where credibility is a factor, that's as good as gold.
You may not be an A-lister but you're no Z-lister anymore (and congratulations on that). You may not be able to grant those of us still on the Z-list the same degree of credibility that Scoble or Gray can, but it does mean something when you pay attention to us. It's sort of a cascading handoff of validity. A-lister to B-lister, down to whatever level you're on, eventually down to us. Those who listen to you get a chance to listen to us.
It's a cool situation, and not unique to the online world. Cred. We all want it to some degree.
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Again thank you.
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best :)
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This is a really interesting post and I appreciate your perspective and commentary. By the way, hats off to Louis Gray who shared the post and therefore it hit my "radar screen. "
At Dell, our approach to listening online, in terms of blogs and online commentary (as opposed to comments at various Dell blogs or Ideastorm or in our Community forums) is that whether or not you are in the top 1% we will hear you and listen. Sometimes the various search tools don't capture everything we want to address, but generally speaking if you have one reader or thousands of reader, if you mention Dell we at a minimum stop by.
Since we "listen" or review nearly 4000 posts per day, we dont respond to everyone. On some posts our customers are there and talking to others about their perspective of Dell. Thank goodness and thank you for that. In others, we digest the information and share internally -- while we cannot comment today, we might have changes that occur tomorrow because of it. In others we engage in a conversation or reach out to solve the immediate issue at hand, offer our perspective from the business point of view, or solicit additional details to folllow up.
We are not perfect. We miss things because of search parameters or coverage or some just slip through the cracks. In another situation, if you have a 5 year Dell system that is out of warranty, there is not much I can do to solve the fact that is slow. Technology changes. Memory and processing power does too.
However, let me assure, top 1% or not.....our approach to social media and online conversations is to listen and become a better business because of it. We believe the direct interactions/conversations and listening we do online is part of what our business was built upon -- directly connecting with customers. And, if in the process of directly connecting with you, we establish a more meaningful relationship between and Dell and you, then all the better.
Afterall that is what the interactive web and social media is all about.
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I know that Dell has taken a lot of flack because of its customer "service" in the past so it is really good to see this kind of initiative from a company like Dell. It is also good to see that you are willing to take the time to talk with the smaller bloggers - for me that says a lot.
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*pauses* *blinks* *ponders*
"What, you meant the top 1%? Shoot, I'm in the bottom 1%."
Anyway...
The very first thing that struck me about your blog was your tagline, "a cranky old fart wandering the internet causing mayhem as he goes".
Perhaps you should step back and consider if that really is the first impression you want a brand-new visitor to have of you. It's marginally funny, but it's way out of whack with the awesome content of your blog.
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I am glad that you think what you do about my writing - it makes it worthwhile.
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Building a network of readers takes time, but once you've built that network, that web, it will be solid and take care of itself. Good luck.