[thoughtleaders] Doc Searls on blogging made easy….

By Tom Foremski - April 22, 2005

[thoughtleaders is part of a new series consisting of vignettes of advice and observation]

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher
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It was a pleasure to meet Doc Searls recently. Doc is what I call a "big link" in the online world: one of the early bloggers, a pioneer of online marketing concepts, co-author of the popular 1999 book "ClueTrain Manifesto," and senior editor at Linux Journal.

Doc said several interesting things during his presentation at a recent Bite Communications sponsored seminar. Doc: "I blog about an hour a day; and I find it easy."

This is an excellent observation on blogging. Doc is right, blogging should be easy. It should be as easy as writing an email to a colleague or buddy. It's not so easy breaking stories, writing news, interviews, analysis and features --the type of journalism that we also have on SiliconValleyWatcher; but the blogging part, like this entry, should be easy. This is my "blog voice," and it is very similar to my "email voice." My blog voice, however, does change according to mood, and how late I stay up blogging (!)

If any one of you is hesitating about writing/starting a blog because you are not yet "ready," I suggest you jump in anyway. It is a forgiving environment; few will read you initially anyway, which means you can experiment with the format and build your readers one by one. And you will understand what this blogging fuss is all about :-)
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By Tom Foremski - April 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Thoughtleaders
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Comments (5)

Take out the actually "blogging" part, and then think of how much time you spend blogging. I counsel clients that while blogging is a great way to reach people, it is time intensive.

Research. Reading. Writing. Interviewing. Coming up with ideas. Writing. To most people, that is not just a one-hour a day event.


Tom Foremski:

Jeremy, yes, you right, it's not easy if you think about it too much. The problem is that in your world of PR, you want everything controlled and written by committee and that gets rid of the vital element in writing, the unpolished but natural voice of the writer. This is what people respond to, not pr speak (not that you do that ;-)


Tom, I have to say that I'm surprised you would comment, "The problem is that in your world of PR, you want everything controlled and written by committee and that gets rid of the vital element in writing, the unpolished but natural voice of the writer. This is what people respond to, not pr speak (not that you do that ;-)"

Doc Searls is PR, too.

From Doc Searls own site in his own bio, "Doc's marketing background dates from 1978, when he co-founded Hodskins Simone and Searls, which became one of Silicon Valley' leading advertising and public relations agencies. (HS&S was sold to Publicis Technology in early 1998.) Doc's marketing consultancy, The Searls Group, began as the public relations side of HS&S. Over the years he has worked with Hitachi, Sun, Apple, Nortel, Borland, ArrayComm , Motorola and other leading companies, in addition to many start-ups."

http://www.searls.com/dochome.html#Bio

I'm guessing that Doc Searls probably wrote that. :-)


Tom Foremski:

Robert, I was trying to be tongue n cheek with Jeremy and didn't mean to look so harsh. And yes, Doc is a top marketeer, and not a Geek engineer! Thank you for pointing it out.

But, marketing or whatever the subject, I still believe that writing a blog entry should be easy. Or at least almost as easy as writing an email. And Jeremy is right in that it does often take a lot of research and time spent thinking to write blog entries. But, most bloggers are doing that anyway, as part of their day jobs. So that part comes for free :-)


Eh, Tom, you know nothing in the world is free. Time is money.