Has blogging lost its soul?
by Guest Contributor on May 7, 2009
in blogging
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a guest post by Janet Green.
There’s a lot of crap out there in the blogosphere – get-rich scams, blogs that exist solely to ‘scrape’ content from other blogs, posts written only with SEO in mind, and so much more. To me the existence of these trappings suggest that perhaps blogging has become something of a “dream career,” surrounded now by hucksters who try to entice the lazy with promises of wealth without much work.
As these voices become greater in number and louder in their shouting, it’s possible – even likely – that the essence of blogging could be lost. And so I’m asking a very basic question: has this already happened? Has blogging lost its soul?
What is the soul of blogging?
Of course, we first have to define the soul of blogging before we can determine if it’s been lost. I hope you will share your definition of “the soul of blogging” in the comments below. Here’s mine:
The soul of blogging is the giving spirit of bloggers.
I’d been blogging about my own minutiae for a few years when I decided to launch a niche blog. My mentor in the leap to “blogging with purpose” was a person who was and is about helping others, Mike Sansone of Converstations. What I learned from Mike is that blogging – even for money – can come from a place of giving (of oneself) rather than seeking rewards. And so for me, if blogging is to retain its soul, bloggers must come from that place of giving in a few different ways:
- They must be authentic. This means they express their own ideas (or build upon/add to the ideas of others) in their own voice.
- They must strive to be altruistic, to be about more than themselves. They cannot be all-consumed with their own expertise, but instead must want to be a resource for their readers, even if that means sharing voices other than their own.
- And they must be generous, seeking to give frequently that which they seek to receive, whether it be comments, or links, or whatever other currency.
So – has blogging lost its soul?
For a brief period in 2007 the blogging pundits were all wondering whether “blogging had peaked” as a medium. This was because a Technorati report on “the health of the blogosphere” showed that the number of daily blog posts worldwide had been dropping. I argued at the time – and I still believe today – that if post quantity was the sole measure of the health of the blogosphere then we were probably delusional about that health anyway. I said at the time:
So while the sheer number of daily posts has perhaps peaked… what’s taking place now is the maturation of the blog from ego-driven, junk-filled novelty to information-rich, purpose-driven conversation.”
This, I argued, was a much better measure of whether “blogging had peaked.” It’s also a fine way to measure whether blogging has lost its soul.
Are bloggers still authentic, altruistic and generous? Mostly, yes. The problem is that the huckster voices – those that seek only to separate you from your money with a big promise, or that exist only to steal your content for the sake of their own “link juice” – seem to be making the most noise, and noise begets attention.
It’s important to remember that those are not the only – or even the primary – voices of the blogosphere. The primary voices are still those who have, over time, established their credentials, given more than they received, and reached out to help others time and time again.
Are some bloggers living a “dream career,” making money from blogging? A few are, yes. But they didn’t get there quickly, and they didn’t get there by hawking some secret formula for blogging success. They built their blogs one authentic, altruistic and generous post at a time. Would that we each could reach that level of success by doing the same.
Janet Green has been blogging since 2002. Her current blogs cover motorcycling, life and family in Des Moines, Iowa, and of course blogging. Her blogs and social media profiles are all linked at www.janetgreen.net.
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Well said Janet! I love your point about the number of daily posts not being a proper barometer for the health of blogging. As I’ve matured as a blogger, my post numbers have gone WAY down, but their quality his gone WAY up. Blogging, as you stated so eloquently, is not about numbers of posts, but “…the maturation of the blog from ego-driven, junk-filled novelty to information-rich, purpose-driven conversation.”
You’ve really given me something to chew on and I thank you for that.
Eric
I definitely consider the huckster blogs to be a form of information pollution. I think people call it signal-to-noise ratio? (How much ‘noise’ you are making versus what you are saying.)
Hayden Tompkins’s last blog post..Birthday Presents Are Not Always Edible
Eric, thanks for the kind words and for the opportunity to share my thoughts with your readers. In addition to writing fewer, but (hopefully) higher quality posts, I find I’m also blogging a little less on at least one of my blogs because I’m now using Twitter to share links and resources. That, too, makes the quantity of posts decline – but I think it complements, rather than hinders, the “health” of the blogosphere.
Hayden, I love the phrase “information pollution” – it’s a great descriptor and EXACTLY what I’m talking about! Thanks for reading!
Janet
Janet Green’s last blog post..Welcome, Blogopolis Blueprint Readers!
Nice post, Janet, and timely.
I love your three points, maybe because my own blog’s built firmly on those foundations. I don’t care if I get ridiculed for having “soul food and support” in my tagline; I’m old enough and wise enough to know whether I’m striving for quality or quantity.
I think the majority of bloggers are decent folk who want to write and connect and work hard at it, but there’s a growing surge of would-be pro-bloggers who think they can miss out on the hard graft stage and make a living just by following formulas and joining tribes. Eric and Sean are proof that you have to put in the hours and be savvy as well has have soul and talent.
janice’s last blog post..From the Pieces of our Lives
Very well said Janet. As a long time blogger have you noticed a trend in people getting wiser as it were. As if they were becoming more and more aware of the old saying
“Empty vessels make the most noise”
I personally think so but then I may be too deeply inside the box to see it from the outside
Janice, you’re precisely right – so many want to get right to the money and forget that there’s a path to it. Here’s the rub: a person who thinks, “I want to get paid for blogging” may step into a well-established site about professional blogging and think, “Wow, look at all the money this person is making – I’ll just follow their formula and make that money too!” But they forget that someone had to WRITE all that content, and that it represents years of work, of trial and error, and of thoughtfully engaging (and helping promote) readers.
By the way, the bead mosaics you pictured on your website were stunning – I’ve bookmarked your site for evening reading
Marc, I do think that yes, sometimes it takes some way-finding for a person to realize that quality trumps quantity when it comes to blogging, but generally if they have good intentions when they start out then they learn that fairly quickly. I try to keep a very broad definition of what constitutes “quality,” because I recognize I am not always (or even often) the target market. Unfortunately, I would say that the one real trend I notice right now is that the “scraper blogs” are becoming more prevalent. They will usually include a link back to my site, as a reward I suppose for having stolen my content, but I would rather have a link from a real blogger because something I wrote resonated with them and they felt compelled to add to my thoughts or even take the opposite viewpoint.
Janet Green’s last blog post..Welcome, Blogopolis Blueprint Readers!
I don’t think blogging is so very different from any other media. There’s a lot of junk mail, a lot of books written just to sell more books and a lot of magazine articles written to sell more magazines…or whatever. It’s the nature of our world. Consumerism. It is up to us to sort through the junk and get to the heart. And we don’t need to blame others for doing it the other way, but we don’t have to read them either.
Nice post Janet.
It seems like every day another “how to make money blogging” site is springing up offering tips on how to write useless, spammy content and monetize by selling the idea to start endless websites advertising how to make money blogging.
Luckily though there are also a number of quality sites coming up that are offering great content (at a slower rate). The bloggers who I admire the most (and who seem the most successful) are the ones who, as you say, are authentic, altruistic and generous. And that’s what we should strive for.
Kate is right, there is junk in every medium, but the low barrier to entry for blogging is making it even easier than for other mediums.
We just need to learn how to sift through the crud.
Kate, you really got me thinking about other media and how this phenomenon has occurred within them, and certainly the parallels you mention are right on target. I think what I was going for here was not so much a “blame others” message, but more of a “hey let’s not forget the roots of this thing.”
Rachel, your point about the low barrier of entry is well taken. Couple that with the claims of “quick and easy,” and it all begins to remind me of that period when desktop publishing was becoming popular – I’m quite sure that actual trained production artists were aghast at the number and quality of people who thought they could design a brochure just because they had Microsoft Publisher on their new computer.
Janet Green’s last blog post..Welcome, Blogopolis Blueprint Readers!
Speaking of authentic, most of the topics that are seen on blogs are been post before. What the gurus are doing is that they are talking about there personal experience with each topic they are writing but I could never call in authenti since it has been rewritten a hundred of times before.
I think at the heart and soul of blogging is passion. Passion for what you write, passion for your readers, and passion for other blogs that feel just as you do about your blog.
The soulless bloggers you refer to don’t have passion, and because of that, I think their lives as “bloggers” will be short lived. Or at least I hope so…………..:)
Thank you for the thoughtprovoking post!!
Some are making money from blogging but we have to remember that most of them are already successful before they are making money from blogging. so it would be wise to supplement your blogging from your job or your business.
Janet, I do get what you are saying. My comment isn’t about blame either, though. I believe that at the heart of blogging, books, e-mails, letters, magazines…whatever..is the the deep desire we have as human beings to communicate with each other. And we use every medium of communication for connection as well as to gain advantage. It’s human nature. It’s up to us to become educated and aware about polluting practices everywhere.