We want to claim the nextNY blog, but we have numerous authors. There doesn't appear to be a way to do this on the site... what's the right protocall for this? I don't want to claim it by myself and hog it... because others will certainly contribute more. Ideas?
All in The Blogosphere
Ok, so the worlds of finance, tech and probably to a lesser extent politics are still boys clubs, but I like to point out when my favorite gender makes some noise.
Found two cool new female bloggers...
A video blog on finance called Wallstrip hosted by Lindsay Campbell. She's still looking for a "booyah"-like catchphrase, but Jim Cramer should still be watching his back.
Ashley Cecil paints politics and other newsworthy items... literally. I'm really tempted to buy the Bubba painting... Gotta love that little stubby thumbs up he gives...she's captured it perfectly.
Also, BizDev2.0 is going to feature some very successful women in technology... Catherine Levene, formally of the NYT Digital and now working with TheFind.com, Tina Sharkey, SVP of AIM and Social Media at AOL, and now a late addition, Zia Daniell Wigder from Jupiter Media.
Now if we could only skew the 90/10 boy/girl ration in the audience.
Some people think this stuff doesn't much matter, but for me, getting perspectives from a wide variety of people is one of the reasons why I blog and participate in these communities. I hope we can see more of this in the future.
As if you couldn't have predicted this when I joined... Oddcast is now blogging! Check out CEO Adi Sideman's first post. I'll be adding posts from time to time as well.
When I
shaved off my facial hair, TONS of people came out and told me how much better they thought I looked without it and how they never really liked it in the first place.
Why the hell didn't they say anything before?
I had facial hair in some form of another for like four years!!
Maybe I wasn't listening?
Oh well, what's done is done. Its obvious. My layout is for suck. Message received loud and clear.
I will change it. Black background: gone.
So, now I need more ideas, more feedback.
I REALLY don't want to have the generic Typepad page look. I want something different. It doesn't even have to be that good, frankly, just different.
How about this:
I have been beaten. Suggestions welcome. This took me like three minutes to do in paint. If anyone takes the time to do a little rendering, I'll post it.
If I met you at a cocktail party and you turned to me and said, "How do I get someone more important than you to listen to me and to pass on what I'm saying," I think I'd prety much walk away right there.
So when Nick Carr rants about how difficult it is to get "A-listers" to link to him and calls its "open and democratic and egalitarian" nature "an innocent fraud", I'm sort of offended... on behalf of all the onesie and twosie readers of really small blogs and all the bloggers with little or no traffic who keep writing.
When I teach blogging at Fordham's MBA program, I always stress that its not about getting traffic, but its about making sure you're available to be discovered. Take this blog about custom labeling. You think he really cares about links from "A-listers"? He just wants to be known to the
custom labeling community... his community. What's great about blogs is that your community will define itself, because discovery is so easy. Stake a claim on Technorati, tag your posts, and make sure you ping the right servers and the right people will find you. So, if Peter only has 15 subscribers for his label blog, its probably the right 15 people and I'm sure engaging in a dialogue with them is worth it.
You don't have to influence everyone... and sometimes just influencing one or two people in a meaningful way can change your life, your business, your career, etc. That, to me, is what blogging is all about.
I like MikeCrunch's take on this as well... that its all about the power of the community. Its not about your blog or my blog, but if word of mouth gets passed around that cocktail party, and we're all talking about it, that's very powerful.
I also think that blogging, if you really want it to have an effect, on you or others, needs to be a lifestyle. I don't mean that you have to post everyday... but, for example... I'm very forthright about the fact that I blog. Its on my outgoing e-mails as a footer link. I know so many people who hide their blogs, but one of the most rewarding things is when someone who just happened to get an e-mail from me, six months later, sees me in person and says, "Hey, what you wrote the other day really made me think... that you're completely wrong."
Can't win 'em all...
I'm now the top ranked Charlie O'Donnell on Google, surpassing the Wheel of Fortune announcer. That's gotta hurt.
40 years on nationally syndicated television and he gets outranked by some punk VC blogger.
You know he's probably Googled himself and seen this, too. It was a long run, Charlie, but it had to end sometime. Sorry, buddy.
I woke up like it was Christmas Day, excitedly springing out of bed to see what kind of journalistic present Kitchen Claus had left for me to open online. While there's no picture online (maybe they didn't come out well... I haven't seen the print addition yet...) the article is a very high level overview of blogs as a career tool... and I think that writing it must have tipped the author off that this whole topic is quite difficult to squeeze into a single column. There are literally hundreds of things that need to be explored on this issue, such as the problems that were highlighted when people start blogging about their jobs, to the potential for people to start treating blogs like an online professional journal for self promotion as I have discussed before. The bottom line is that there will be a career blog book the same way the B&N career section is filled with "Best Sites for Job Hunters" and "Using the Internet to Find a Job" books. The question is: Will someone let me be the first one to write it?
Here's the article.
My thanks to Patricia Kitchen for giving me the opportunity to share some of my experience with Newsday readers.
As a side note, it was very cool to be quoted in the same article as Typepad's mom, Mena Trott.
Link: Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs : Lawyer blogs stream the best CLE to lawyers.
Lawyers are blogging about the article! Its always worthwhile to make nice with lawyers... those are people you don't want on your bad side. :) Kevin the blogging lawyer echoes the growing awareness that blogs are quickly becoming an indespensible career tool. (I found this by searching for my name in Technorati.)