Tag Archives: guru

5 signs its time to quit blogging

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I have juggled with blogging for almost a decade now trying to maintain and post to a real estate related blog and this personal weblog of thoughts, observations, events, tech stuff, pictures, and miscellaneous topics that intrigued me for a moment.  I guess at some point in every blogger’s life, the blogging becomes much more of a chore than a pleasure – the hassles outweigh the rewards. As I make the move toward decommissioning my real estate blog I am thinking of signs that its time to quit.  One of the first rules of blogging is to post lists and get more readers:  10 best…, 12 most effective,  7 reasons…, etc.  Here’s my list of 5 signs it’s time to quit blogging.

1. Lack of readers – you are agonizing over your posts and the stats are showing you are only getting a handful of visitors a month and to top that off, your bounce rate is in the high 70s.  Blogging has just become personal journalling; you might as well be doing it in a Moleskin as wasting the resources putting it online. And, oh, don’t let anyone give that line about the long tail.

2. Lack of passion – If you are doing a topical blog like real estate, you must have passion to crank out interesting content.  Otherwise you find yourself  posting monthly housing stats, and links to interesting real estate stories rather than seeking out the unusual and the interesting.

3. Lack of financial reward – whether you are blogging to build or promote your business or blogging professionally – monetizing your site through ads or affiliations, if you are not seeing suitable rewards, either monetarily or through increased business, name recognition or credibility, it is probably time to move along to another medium that has a better possibility of helping pay the bills.

4. Lack of talent – I know it may be hard to admit, but maybe you just don’t have what it takes to be a blogger. Maybe constructing a sentence is a challenge.  Maybe you just can’t get all that stuff about keywords and metatags right.  Maybe you don’t have the thought patterns of a writer.  Maybe you suck as a blogger.  Don’t hang on and torture yourself, find something else. In my case, I realize that I am a better curator than blogger.   Maybe your calling is sharing stuff rather than creating it. You may get loads of interaction on Google Plus or Facebook and enjoy that type of interaction rather than waiting around for someone to comment on your blog posts.

5. Attitude – You have followed all the “rules” the blogging gurus have taught you, and still aren’t quite where you want to be.  What’s your attitude?  Are you whipped? Tired? Burned out?  Why not join me and try Defiant for a while.

In future posts I want to discuss ways we can share our thoughts and ideas most effectively.  The next post will be about breaking the “rules” of blogging.  I will also share the progress of dismantling my real estate blog.

The Social Media Guru

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[Joe Spake Weblog Blast from the Past -Originally posted October 4, 2009 – and not much has changed]

Recently I attended a brainstorming session sponsored by a local business to help the decision maker decide how to move forward with the organization’s implementation of Social Media.  The decision maker had little more that a conversational grasp of Twitter, Facebook, etc, and there he was at the table with the local SM literati. A conversation like that can quickly get esoterically out of hand, especially for those decision makers who are at the you know something is happening but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones? stage.

This video will first have you ROTFL;  but you will go back and listen to the words and message again. Caution: Strong Language!

It seems that everyone who can figure out how to open a Facebook account or do a few Tweets is a social media expert these days, and if they want to bill at a higher rate, they are gurus.  Almost everyone  seems to be jumping on the bandwagon that’s running down the yellow brick road to a gold mine. It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon, but it takes a little more effort to book passage on the Cluetrain.

I am not criticizing Social Media consulting .  I really believe that the Integration of Social Media into PR , Marketing and Advertising is vital to business. The question is which thought leader do you follow? I oftenre-read and  link to Geoff Livingston and Beth Harte’s Top 25 ways to tell if your social media expert is a carpetbagger.

There has been an interesting conversation on the RE.net about the most influential social media users in the real estate business.  The analysts make lists based on statistical data, and now Inman News is having a popularity contest (Oh please vote for me so my ego won’t be bruised any more than it has already been by not being included on the other lists). The big question is Who Cares?  Are there really no better ways of measuring credibility and competence than inclusion on a list? [2012 -well, now we have Klout and Kred, but is that much better?]  If I were hiring a SM guru, or reading his/her posts, or considering buying his/her books, or advising a client on how to make the choice, I would refer back to Livingston and Hart’s 25 ways and other posts along the same theme, like this one from Terry Ellwood or this one I wrote a while back.

Now, write me a check for 5000 Euros and I will say adios.

Human aggregators – the latest magic bullet?

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Everyone’s looking for a magic bullet to conquer social media, leverage Web 2.0 to their advantage, dominate the digital marketplace, and further their self-described expert/guru status.  This seems to be especially prevalent with the late adopters in RE.net ( the real estate cool kids of Web 2.0),  but I see traces of the magic bullet attitude in almost every conversation I have about social media and digital marketing strategy.  That tone surfaces in this post proposing the end to RSS in favor of human aggregators -basically asking the question, why should I waste my time with my Google Reader, when I can just follow what the cool kids are sharing?

We  can easily find the best blogs and the best thought on the web and add them to our RSS feeds.  But lately we  have been provided with lists of the most influential people, by various sources ranging from Web 2.0 veterans to late adoptors adding themselves to their own lists.  Twitter encouraged this when they introduced Lists, so the relevance of your twitter presence can be measured by some scale on how many lists include you.  You don’t have to go look for followers,  just copy some guru’s list.

Obviously we have moved beyond lists to Human Aggregators, people whose social content is so rich, comprehensive, and relevant, that you need not seek out information or connections on your own, just follow them for everything you need to know.  The ultimate magic bullet.  So, now we will begin to see more and more lists of  human aggregators. Stop reading right now and make your own list.  It will be just as meaningful and relevant as any other that you find.

I value those gurus out there, selflessly sharing stellar content, but I like to do some reading and research on my own.  I still subscribe to over 200 RSS feeds, that include technology, news, and real estate specific content.  I interact with folks who are not gurus or cool kids.  I drill down on hyper local information.  I share what I think is relevant.  Maybe the real magic bullet is Time Management,  and not just  following the gurus.  You can learn to manage your time AND share content that is relevant!

When I first heard the term Human Aggregator, one famous Web 2.0 name immediately came to mind.  A person who tweets over 15o times a day, and has a website that covers any topic you could imagine.  I guess someone could make the argument that someone that prolific should be crowned King of the Aggregators.  Why go anywhere else?

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