What's a blog supposed to be?

Okay, so I started another series of interviews - VC2PR. While Steve Rubel recommends SEO terms for headlines - better to get links to your blog, and raise that profile - I rather have headlines that are quirky and fun, but also can be slightly branded so that people can look at my sidebar - or my Technorati tags if they actually ever worked - and know that I am the PR Face2Face blogger or now the VC2PR blogger. It's partial personal branding, and partial blog branding.

Why? Because I wanted to keep content fresh on my blog, continue to learn from others, and continue to grow for myself and for my readers. Those in PR - whether one year or 20 years - well, we can continuely learn from others. When you stop learning, you start dying.

Also, something I read today by Tom Murphy made me think about this blog, and moving forward. Blogging is tiring, it can be draining. Some bloggers out there are saying that posts shouldn't be longer than 150 words, or that posts should be chock full of links, or that posts should be just links to other articles. Give me a break - who appointed these people the overseers of the blogosphere? So, you can't post commentary longer than 150 words? Pshaw. Blogs should be links to other blogs? Well, that just propogates the notion that the blogosphere is one big 's just a circle jerk. Blogs should be chock full of links - those are called link blogs, and some of them might as well be link farms.

A blog is a person's or corporation's own personal work - if you want to post partial feeds, go for it. If you want to post long posts and commentary, go for it. If you want to be part of the herd, and do what every one else says to do - SEO optimization, link farming, name dropping, short posts, - go for it. It's the blogosphere, do whatever you want.

Me? Well, I will continue to post my interviews and my commentary, and see what happens. And, maybe get that redesign up.

Technorati tags:


Comments
7 comments
  1. Gotta agree. The blog is what you want it to be. Sure, if your goal is to use the blog as a tactic to increase visibility in search engines, then follow those 'key terms/phrases' ideas. But not all blogs have to be that way.

    Also, there are benefits to using the CMS without the planned / strategic terms and links that will still raise your visibility somewhat.

    I read blogs (yours adn others) for the ideas, the interviews and the personal perspectives/insights about PR. Short or long posts, the content still makes all the difference.

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  2. I'm with you Jeremy, your blog is your blog. The whole point is that we readers will decide what we want to read and ignore the rest, if all you can stand is 150 words, fine, move on, but the rest of us will keep doing what we do.

    On another note, I've gotten much better performance out of Technorati tags once I started using Ping-o-Matic.

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  3. Oh, I use Pingomatic - I actually brought it up at the NewComm Forum, and some of the seasoned bloggers didn't know about the service.

    Still doesn't help.

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  4. Sorry about Technorati, don't know what to tell you except that they're going to have to upgrade from the two hamster spinning wheels (as is every other blog tool I've come across) because it is just too damned slow.

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  5. Oh, the CS person I was working with rocked. Just, never could figure out why my tags weren't working.

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  6. I agree - it's the blogosphere, do whatever you want with your blog. This is what makes it so cutting edge and exciting. If you tell people they have to start writing like this or talking about that - we will see them losing motivation and start forcing out posts. There's no fun in that.

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  7. I like it, I like it! Thanks,this makes things a whole lot clearer. I never understood why some people want to regulate the creativity out of everyone. the idea and cocept of a blog is here to stay, it is an expression of what you want it to be. Quite noteworthy to observe so many professional people getting hot under the collar about blogging and bloggers in general.

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