Hi folks, Eric here. I saw this great post on Wired a couple of days ago, and I have been thinking about it a lot. It’s a summary of an interview with Chris Alden, the CEO of Six Apart who make that awesome Movable Type platform, and host Typepad and Vox and are generally on the forefront of new technology. My first blogging platform was Movable Type, and after 6 years of hand-coding even the smallest of changes, I couldn’t believe how much better my relationship with the internet had suddenly become. But I digress…
I will start with my least favorite part of the interview. Kevin Maney claims to have met up with Chris “…over a Belgian Beer….” This made me thirsty and confused, as I had no idea which Belgian beer - they are all so different and I didn’t know which specific beer I should obsess over until the workday was done. Now I will have to sample many to make certain I have the mood just right. But again, I digress…
The general thrust of the interview is that the sputtering economy will lead to a surge in quality and quantity in the blogosphere. Bloggers will certainly start cranking up the quality scale in an effort to assert their personal brand - to show current employers what a smart person they are, and to help potential future employers become more comfortable with hiring them. Also, more undirected time will lead to more time spent creating blog posts (and tweets, and flicks, and bulletins, and shoutcasts, and what we like to call “interactions” etc.).
Seems like a pretty good bet, and after the recent uptick in the corporatization of blogs, I for one look forward to a new potential golden age of blogging (and interactioning).
Then, today, I saw this tremendously encouraging post by Steve Rubel on Micropersuasion (a BlogBurst member, btw). Steve is one of the true pioneers of blogging and was really instrumental (imho) in making sure the mainstream ‘got’ blogging and social media in general. Lately his posts have been a little bleak for me - RSS peaking, blogs may start restricting full feeds - but this post was a nice companion to the thoughts seeded by the other article. As you approach recreating your personal brand for a struggling economy, I think these tenets are non-assailable: Find your core genius, simplify, and be premium.
As for me, I am giving myself two additional pieces of advice. First I think I should focus on listening. My uncle Byron always used to say “you can learn more from listening than you can from talking” (also he said “before you write a book, you should erase one”)(also “it’s easier to apologize than to ask permission”). Second, I’m going to dust off that old homebrewing kit and make me some Belgian beers.
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