a critical eye on your blog and mine

What happens when a leader questions himself?

Mitch Joel, who I have written about in this space before, is a social media thought leader. I didn’t say expert because I think the term “social media expert” has been watered down by schmoes trying to cash in with little in their credibility bank.

Mitch has loads of credibility because of his knowledge and passion for the subject of social media. So it was with some surprise that I and his other subscribers read one of his recent posts entitled “Five Reasons Why This Blog is a Failure“.

If you write a blog, this question is worthy of your consideration. In this case, someone who knows more about blogging and social media than you or me is asking this question of himself.

I hope you’ll read the wholepost but to summarizes, Mitch seems a bit obsessed with the Ad Age Power 150 which is a daily ranking of marketing blogs. Mitch is ranked #22 while his friend Chris Brogan is ranked #1. So Mitch asked his other friend Julien Smith (who has co-authored a book with Chris Brogan) about why Mitch’s blog isn’t as popular as Chris’ blog.

My point to Mitch in my comment (yes, I am one of those people that actually supports blogs by leaving comments…few people do that any more) was that we men have a problem worrying about size and who is bigger in many aspects of our lives and the answer matters very little to blogs.

To me, it’s not how many people read your blog but rather are the right people reading your blog.

Who is your audience? What do they need to know? How can you help them with your content? What do you want to accomplish by publishing your blog?

There is no Ad Age Power Ranking for Voice Over blogs so I’ll defer to our friend Google and the search term “voice over blog”. I’m ranked like 7th in a very small, niche category. Does that mean there are 6 more popular blogs than mine or does that mean I am a top 10 blogger? Is your glass half full or half empty?

For me, I write about what I am passionate about (voiceover, marketing and advertising) and most times I try and put forth stuff that will help or entertain readers.

Sometimes, selfishly, I write just to please myself.

But in either case I stay true to what I know (very well) about and what content pleases me. Hopefully that content will please my readers (I am grateful to have even the one subscriber – who may or may not be a family member, I dunno).

If it was just about the readers, this would be a newspaper and I’d sell ads. But it’s not and I don’t.

Still, I like Julien’s ideas and know that this blog (and probably yours) is a work in progress. How would you improve this blog? What changes would you suggest I make? What changes should you make in your blog?

All while staying true our (yours and mine) original focus.

One Response to “a critical eye on your blog and mine”

  1. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Robert Kavanagh. Robert Kavanagh said: voxmarketising – the audio'connell blog and podcast: Mitch Joel, who I have written about in this space before, is… http://bit.ly/bbcauF […]