Monday, January 26, 2009

Should a Blogger Contribute or Create?

Since I started this blog I have usually had a post idea or two in my pocket for when the time comes to write a post. However this week the three post ideas I have are taking a little longer to develop than I had anticipated ... so I was stuck with no pearls of marketing wisdom to impart on you!

It occurred to me that I often contribute interesting view points (well I think so anyway) to conversations on other posts that I could, instead of contributing to the conversation, hold back and develop the idea/point into my own blog post.

An example is a comment I made at Consumer Psychologist where Adam Ferrier commented that "I think people with a history in social media who want careers in marketing and communications should get educated in the broader aspects of human behaviour and marketing. Please. Some of the comments people are making in this space are at best naive".

You can read my comment here. As I was writing the comment I almost stopped and kept it to develop into my own post but then decided that would be against one of the general concepts of blogs - to create conversations.

So I am wondering, do you wrestle with the same problems? Do you often start to write a comment on someone’s blog but then keep it for your own post development? Do you have a trick where you can contribute and create at the same time?

8 comments:

Gavin Heaton said...

Hey Daniel ... this is the original intention of "trackbacks". By sending a trackback (that creates a link to your post), it shows that you are contributing to a conversation.

I generally write my own post where a comment is longer than a couple of paragraphs.

Zac Martin said...

I'm with Gavin on this one. If something is long enough and can be explored enough then I normally post about it.

Depends on the topic, but guilty as charged. Hehe.

Unknown said...

Depends if I feel that there is more juice in the topic, or that I feel it could go down another angle. If there is a healthy conversation happening on the original post it's best to keep it all there. And there's no need to have another post when there is no difference of opinion, that is just boring.

Always appreciate your thought starters and prods on my posts Daniel, you're usually the starter of conversation and not just a contributor!

Daniel Oyston said...

Thanks Nathan ... how I have evolved! You describe me as a conversation starter ... maybe I should post my old school reports which describe me as "Daniel is a distraction to other students".

No word of a lie, my best mate at the time, his reports used to read "Ben is easily distracted by other students"

Matt M said...

For about 12 months, I didn't blog - I just left comments on other people's posts. I loved the idea of being a ghost in the machine, of creating a persona purely based on responses. The I started blogging again (that was largely Gav's fault).

I view comments as gifts. Not always wanted gifts (some are the equivalent of aftershave from your auntie) but gifts none the less. If your comment is good, you're making someone else's site more interesting.

Gifts are important.

Unknown said...

It depends on the topic and if it's something that interests me. Clearly this one has!

Gary Griffiths said...

came across your blog from twitter...so, contribution or creation? I'd say either/neither. As a reader I want value, or I'll leave.

I like your posts. I'll be sticking around for a while.

Daniel Oyston said...

Thanks Garry, I appreciate the comments. I agree, too often we all lose vision of "value" ... it is a foundation of marketing!