Fear of unfamous
a la Hughster
When my son was little (look at me being a mommy blogger ;)), he would do really cute stuff and all of us fawning over him would laugh and giggle with delight. Of course, being a bright boy, he would observe our delight and repeat the cute stuff. He was becoming aware of what got him attention.
When I started out blogging, nobody, not even my mom, read me. I just blogged my little heart out. I posted ridiculous rants, went on about my cat and, ocassionally, wrote a nice little piece about my thoughts on how marketing had to change. As my audience grew (due to the marketing posts, mostly) I became aware of stigmas around cat blogging and ranting without some sort of research. So, I stuck with my marketing posts...kinda.
Somehow, I was introduced to Technorati and became addicted to my 'rank'. It was a thin slice of the pie, but, dammit, I could drop numbers at cocktail parties, "Out of 24 million blogs, I'm at 65,000 - not so bad for a Canadian nobody...har har har," and it seemed, the more one grew in ranking, the more readers one obtained. The self-importance bubbled.
But something happened along the way that I didn't like so much. I started to become fearful of blogging. I would sit down and write something, delete it, re-write it, cross-check it, then carefully analyze whether this post was going to 'hold their attention' (whoever 'they' were). I had oodles of perfectly great rants and fun posts sitting, unpublished, because they didn't fit the formula of my previously popular posts. And, yes, there is a formula.
And I was afraid. I was always afraid. At the rank of 16,500 (I think it was), I was deadly afraid that people would stop reading me, I would slip down in the rankings and nobody would link to me ever again. I call that time my 'dark ages'.
After about a month of that, though, I made a discovery. Formulaic and all, I wasn't gaining any ground. I was feeling stale. I wasn't enjoying blogging. Then someone told me a secret: blog like you have 2 readers...and the fear melted away for me.
It was so freeing. It was so inspirational. And some of my
Now, everytime I feel the fear of 'losing that fame for 15 people', I remind myself that there is only two...and those two love me for crazy me. (okay, so one IS my mom and the other is Chris who has to read my blog or else I get really grumpy. Tad? Forget it. Don't you know 'It's lame'?)
8 Comments:
neat entry.
i'm a web programmer, not a marketer. what do you think of the idea of web-based applications that let non-programers create simple web applications in a sufficiently nice, elegant way? (i mean, suppose there existed such a tool to accomplish this.) e.g., something that would let a web designer who's good with photoshop but not Rails/PHP create simple feedback forms and crap and other relatively simple things.
uh, is that interesting to people like you? being able to add simple database-backed dynamic functionality without having to install anything or do any programming, or having to know SQL or anything?
I thinnk you may have just written something to get me motivated into doing it again. My lack of activity over the past 2 weeks has been next to nothing for much the same reasons you quote here - lack if desire fuelled by a fear of writing something those few readers I have won't like and leave.
The Pinko blog, Pinko wiki, Pinko Google group and my own blog have all suffered as a result!
Need to get myself out of it sharp-ish!!
I think we should get some more cat blogging posts. Cat blogging without the cats - could be the start of a new trend ;-)
If I could promote one thing it would be humor within business (and by extension within blogging). There's a lot of great information out there, but sometimes it's too dry to digest easily, like piles of melba toast.
Humor in business (and blogging), including rants, cat blogging and other insanity is a way to show people who you really are, which I think helps connect you to the community.
What a great, honest post. Love it!
I've been obsessing on my Technorati rank lately because it's dropped from a decent 13k or so down to 33k, and then I notice that a number of sites I know have just linked to me are not being picked up by Technorati so the numbers are inaccurate, and yet I still obsess. Thank you for the reminder to get over it and just write!
Hi Tara,
A great post. We all have to remember what this is really all about.
And in a world in which we are what we do, as long as we do interesting things, we will find people who share those interests.
What you're doing with CA is great. I remember the excitement when I set out on my own in '95. And your posts carry that once-in-a-lifetime excitement.
Keep it up - and your audience of two will always be there.
Thank you for this reminder. I think I needed it.
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