Copywriter Bob Bly is planning to give up the ghost, so to speak, on blogging after just a week. Remember, Bob’s the guy who sparked a little blogosphere storm (in a teacup, really) last month with an article in a marketing newsletter that basically said blogs are a complete waste of time.
To give him some credit, he did eventually start a blog as a means of seeing for himself what this is all about.
This morning, my RSS feed included a post on BlogWrite for CEOs by Debbie Weil commenting on Bob’s new plan to give up. A quick jump over to Bob’s blog and lots of comments there on why he should stick with it.
Will he? Up to him, but he’d be very silly to give up on it now. What’s more, all the posts and comments about the value of blogs are giving him some keen marketing advice which he certainly wouldn’t get without blogs. A waste of time? I don’t think so.
So, continuing scanning my RSS feed from a few days ago – doing some catch-up reading – a few wondrous things going on caught my eye.
From Evelyn Rodriguez at Crossroads Dispatches, a great definition of leadership:
Leadership is communicating people’s worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. Notice the words worth and potential. People must feel an intrinsic sense of worth – that is, they have intrinsic value – totally apart from being compared to others, and that they are worthy of unconditional love, regardless of behavior or performance. Then when you communicate their potential and create opportunities to develop and use it, you are building on a solid foundation. To communicate people’s potential and give them a sense of extrinsic worth is a flawed foundation, and their potential will never be optimized. – by Stephen Covey, The 8th Habit.
Chris Pirillo writes about LabelsWin, a rather neat little add-in for Windows that let’s you add colour labels to your folder icons. Whoopee! you say. But I love stuff like this.
A news item in The Register says if you thought Oracle’s attempt to acquire PeopleSoft has been fun, then hang on for a series of wild rides. Oracle is in a buying kind of mood, according to its president. “We have said all along that there are multiple acquisition possibilities,” Oracle’s co-president Charles Phillips told Reuters in an interview. “We are talking to other companies as we speak. We have multiple ideas.”
Other people with good ideas include French newspaper Le Monde who has launched reader blogs. As Loic le Meur reports, Le Monde is one of the first newspapers in the world to offer blogs to their readers, putting those readers on the same level as professional journalists.
In a similar vein, Josh Hallett has news about a Chilean newspaper website where readers determine which stories are followed-up on. Josh also speaks about the Financial Times and how they are looking at using search logs to predict what stories may be out there. Participatory journalism indeed.
Back to blogging now. Frank Paynter at Sandhill Trek conducted a little survey for the IT Kitchen collaborative blog project by simply asking “why do we blog?”
Says Frank, “I thought it would be valuable to compile insights from some of the articulate digital self publishers known as ‘bloggers.’ Little did I know it would turn into a hobby. Here are reflections from thirty-five bloggers, an even three dozen if you count me.”
Bob Bly, you should read this.
It’s been an interesting week.
I’m not giving it up; I am dedicated to sticking with it for a full year.
But I am struggling to see the value that you, Deb, Rick Bruner, David St. Lawrence, B.L. Ochman, and so many others see.
It’s fun, but the next big thing in marketing or publishing or communication? So far, I don’t see it.
That’s very good to hear, Bob.
As for value, well, you have had lots of inputs from lots of people! Nearly all of the comments to the post you wrote on your blog are just great ideas on the value your blog can give you.
Yes, I know none of that is direct ROI. But think of your blog as your support vehicle. Good example – a couple of your commenters said they’d never heard of Bob Bly before but, through the wonders of RSS and other things, have now found you online.
After the initial flurry of criticims following your DM News piece, what you’re seeing now is broadly supportive commentary about you and your blog. I’d argue that you can see that as an ROI.
I bet you get a new client, sooner or later, because of your blog!