Blogging Is All About Relationships
At least that’s what the Blog Herald teaches you. The past few weeks have been a flurry of posts about how blogs affect relationships, and how blogs themselves are all about relationships. There’s how to build blog relationships by making good first impressions. Then there’s building blog relationships by showcasing your popular posts (what I personally call link baiting). Then what about building personal relationships first before visiting another person’s blog? Then there’s linking and relationships.
Isn’t blogging just about what you have to say anymore? Do you really have to build relationships by blogging?
Now blogging is becoming just like social networking. Only this time, it’s not a closed system, but a more open system wherein you can become friends with the rest of the blogosphere, and the only requirement is that you link to other people, you blogroll them, or leave comments on their blogs.
This makes the definition of blogging even more complicated than it already is, methinks.
Blogging is about relationships. Some people say that the definition of a blog versus a website is that a blog permits comments. If that ain’t creating a relationship, what is?
But you make a good point. Blogging “was” about what you want to say. Then it became about what others wanted to hear. If you wrote what they wanted to hear, you got more traffic. What bloggers are learning now is that it is a two way street. Blogging is about saying what you want to say, saying things people want to hear, and then listening to what they have to say so you can tell them more of what they want to hear. See the connection.
For those who just blog for the expression, they can do so. For those who want to build a reputation, make money, build a support network, and such, it’s about the relationships we form with our blogs, not about the blogs themselves.
I hope our series on the Blog Herald reflects that.
Lorelle said this on April 9, 2007 5:01 am