My Review of Blogging and My Suggestion on How to Make It Work

Posted on December 14, 2007 by Ed

I read that Cobb and EC Hopkins are considering hanging up their hats in blogging. I know of other bloggers that got burned out and stop blogging altogether. But no one has asked after years of this blogging thing are there better ways to contribute content on the Internet than the current blogging practice?

I think the blog thing is a whack platform. First of all, people are committing themselves to writing articles like they are a magazine or newspaper operation. Bloggers feel they have to write something every day and they have to commit to their audience. This drains a lot of bloggers who are not professional writers and live regular lives and I know people that are addicted to making sure they have some fresh content on their blog every day for their readers.

Now with that said, the worst thing I hate about blogs is the way blogs are designed to be chronological order. When I go to a blog, I’m reading what that person is about right now, even though they probably wrote some real good content several months ago. I only see the latest three to five articles they wrote even though they wrote a hundred before that are probably 10x better. Good content is good content and irrelevant to the date the blogger wrote it to appear on the front page. There need to be a better way to get to that earlier content than clicking on an “Archive” section. Also, tags are a joke and I wish a nerd would try to compare Fooky, Inc. phrase-based platform to tagging because it is nothing like that simple, worthless crappy way to index content.

My company, Fooky, Inc. already addressed the shortcoming of blogging with two web properties we are going to release soon. Fookymedia.com is a multimedia platform that uses a combination of video, image, audio and text for people to blog with and utilizes phrase-based relevance rather than chronological listings. It also will have a free-market advertisement sponsor system that allows a business or person to sponsor anyone running a blog through Fookymedia.com with no minimum amount. That means I can pay someone with a blog hosted by Fookymedia.com $5 out of my pocket each month to play our online Fooky.com video commercial. Micro-advertising stuff that will allow local barbers to sponsor their clientele blog. It will be an open bidding like the stock market and I can’t talk more about it because the tech bigots snooping Dream and Hustle don’t need to know this. I need the tech bigots to think I’m some mediocre Black guy in technology just fronting – Art of War stuff.

Also there is another Fooky, Inc. platform called MidlandObserver.com will be a aggregate content provider for blogs and other online content providers. I feel stuff like RSS where you subscribing to feeds is a bunch of information overload crap and think there should be a better way to extract the best content that is relevant to people. Midland Observer uses a phrase-based system that allows people to see the news they want by using phrases. For example the phrases a person would use in Midland Observer if they want to have news stories similar to CNN offering is “no positive black people”, “missing white females”, ”britney spears” or “people killed overseas” and using selective phrases is how Midland Observer will change the game on how the news is presented. I was inspired by Barbara Bush “beautiful mind” comment to create Midland Observer and you know what – she was right on when she said what she said. You guys are too beautiful to be watching some local news that want to scare you about bank robberies, home invasions, child abductions, hostage standoff, suspicious package, deadly shootings, local soldier killed and sexual assaults at 6am, 12pm, 5pm and 11pm every day of your life. I want people to have a choice to what they want to see as news to them.

But enough of my plugs and self-hype, right now we still got to deal with blogging even though the platform sucks. If you are a blogger, I would suggest you consider what I’m about to say because I researched blogging enough to know how it works and how to make it better. Overall, the good bloggers know propaganda 101. They know how to work people nerves or make people send $100 cash stuffed in a brown envelope to a PO Box. They know how to use words and media to play against their opposition like superimposing their opponent picture over a donkey with PhotoShop. They can take other people comments and purposely take it out of context to bait. They also know how to make sure their opinions are polarizing so either you love them or you love to hate them. They know how to put an angle on the talk of the day to stay relevant and attract more people. If you really want to blog, you got to know how to play with the information that works, not use blogging as a soapbox for your rants and musing.

So let’s review blogging and what it takes to be a long term blogger until Fooky, Inc. brings out the good stuff:

Have a Real Goal and Intention. Your blog should be a mission, not just some sounding board or soapbox. That means you must have an objective, goal and purpose with it. What is your blog designed to accomplished? Is it designed to educate, entertain or just offend? What do you want to do with your blog? Do you want to attract like-minded people, potential customers or anonymous morons? And what purpose does it fulfill? Does it help you express yourself, does it help you help others or does it allow you to be a moron to a wider audience? Make sure your blog has a purpose and what you have in mind. My blog for example is really designed to inform, entertain, educate brothas and sistas toward free-thinking and entrepreneurship and at the same time offend tech bigots and sellouts.

Focus on a Diversity of Content. One of the biggest mistakes I see bloggers do is focus too much on a narrow topic and stick to that topic. It is their ideology, their special style of articulation or their personal grudge or fan club. Bloggers who do that bore the living crap out of me – get a life, dude! All you blog about is Web 2.0 or Google and you wonder why someone taking your chick across the bridge to a downtown Oakland hotel to bang her? Loser! But for real, the best thing to do is just talk about every day things. What’s on the news today? How did it make you feel? See, you can blog about that and add your slant and people will participate. Then you can switch up back and forth on your soapbox rant and keep people engaged. But when you act all like you have to write something new about the same old crap you talk about because you got a “theme” going, people will see you as stale and predictable. Talk about everything. There is an presidential election going on and you can plug your candidate and bash the others if you want – it is plenty of things to talk about. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot trying to have a constant agenda or theme.

Focus on a Diversity of Media. Don’t just write text all the time – mix your blog up with pictures, videos and audio from time to time. Everyone ain’t a hard-core text reader and some people like to just look at pictures or videos. You actually can just link to videos and provide a one-line commentary. Some bloggers write text and text like they are the next Unabomber or BTK and I think if you change up the format of the media, you make your blog unpredictable and fresh for readers to come back more and more.

Entertain Your Readers. If you have people that read your blog, treat them like they are special. You got to have some PT Barnum in you to keep them asking for more. Think about it – all of the millions of web sites out there and they chose your blog. You can’t tell me that they chose you don’t mean anything. I’m not telling you to kiss your readers behind but you should never take them for granted. Don’t preach to them, ask for their input on what you are talking about. Respond to your readers when they write comments on your articles. If strippers in Atlanta can acknowledge a brotha for raining dollars on them while they are on stage, you can acknowledge your readers when they step and provide commentary on whatever you wrote about. I make it a habit to link to people who comment on my blog, whether I liked what they say or not. Let them know they are appeciated.

Consolidation Is Natural and Makes Sense. If you like blogging or feel like you got something to say for the Internet audience out there but don’t want to be committed to blogging, then co-op with another blogger. Blackprof.com is the perfect example of this and what they doing eases the pressure off of each other as well as build relationships among like-minded people. If you like blogging about customizing Japanese cars and you know another blogger that like customizing European cars, yall can get together on one blog and just take turns and aggregate your audience. What many bloggers don’t know is if you do that, you actually have revenue potential that can be split up – in fact, it is more profitable to co-op blogging than blogging on your own. I believe the best co-op blogs are like Sunday talk show roundtable of people with various backgrounds and opinions on a particular topic. Those type of blogs attract all kinds of people and create great discussion from the polarity and those type of blogs can generate great revenue. Why did you think Roger and Ebert movie reviews were so successful after all those decades together? Because audiences love people having difference of opinion and fighting to prove their point is right. Jerry Springer is an extreme but he still packs the house using that same dynamic of polarizing opinions and people fighting to make their point.

So if you are a blogger, I suggest you keep these points in mind I discussed. Don’t give up, because it is people like me in technology that are working on better blogging models for you to express yourself. I personally like blogging because I know my long-term agenda and who I’m trying to reach and offend. I know my blog can counter any media outlets that think they can just crap on me because I’m Black and think they can get away with it. And it helps me better articulate my points and write better as well as speak better. I can tell you a secret of why I can blog so much and still got time for other things. I usually eat 3 packs of Skittles and drink cherry Kool-Aid 30 minutes prior just to get me in the mood to blog about the stuff I blog about. That’s works for me but I don’t know if it would work for anyone else.