Came across an interesting post by Suzanne Vara, Managing Partner at Kherize5, titled “Is Vanity Killing Your Blog?“ It’s good… go read it. I’ll wait.
The point about the pressure to constantly strive for more, create fresh new content, put forth more “conversation and connecting” into the WWW is incredibly timely. Essentially, with all this talking, who is listening?
We all have been taught that the way to be the most interesting person at the party is to be the most interested (in others, the host, the food, etc.), which means asking questions and enabling the next logical and engaging comments from the other person (in other words, basic etiquette). Gut check: Does this type of etiquette happen on your blog? On your Facebook fan page? In your Twitter stream? Hmmmm…
About Wendi McGowan
Wendi
You bring up a very good point here – who is listening. Vanity does kill blogs as the self induced pressure to hit the mark and the traffic counts takes away from looking at who is listening. We listen to those we trust but how can we trust when there is inconsistency or not really knowing that they are listening? Our attention is stretched in many areas with social media and traditional networking and being here, there and everywhere is not easy but identify where your audience is and spending time with them does make you the most interested and you have the time to stop and listen.
Thanks for the article mention as well.
@SuzanneVara
You are quite welcome, Suzanne! I think the next point for discussing is Community vs. Content… the need for marketers to be focused on when the communities’ conversation organically leads vs. the need to “push” company-centered content out on the world.