Not Cats — Seth Says It Better

Every blogger knows it. The word blog comes up and someone says, “Oh they’re nothing but online diaries.” I’ve even named an imaginary book over that occurrence it’s called

If You Think My Blogs Are Online Diaries, I Think Your Wine Comes From a Box.

I don’t often say it aloud, except to my closest friends and to folks who are bloggers. But the analogy is a true one.

Seth Godin Says It Better

Today I was rereading Seth Godin’s Book “Who’s There” on Blogs that Work, Seth defines three kinds of blogs.

• CAT BLOGS — These are the “online diaries,’ we hear people with candles chanting day and night about.These blogs don’t get many readers, nor should they. I can get the same kind of personal information from strangers in elevators and on airplanes when people take their cell phones out.
• BOSS BLOGS — This is the blog as a communication tool. One person keeps all of the information on a project archived in one place so that others can access it, keeping everyone on the proverbial same page.
• VIRAL BLOGS — These blogs, as Seth says (and I agree), are changing the fields of marketing and journalism. Viral blogs make everyone a publisher, give everyone a place to publish ideas and get them out to an audience who might bring the blog publisher work, respond to a cause, buy a product, interact with a writer, and most of all, be influenced. People are being influenced by viral blogs. Daily Kos: State of the Nation, Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide, Michelle Malkin, Scobleizer Microsoft Geek Blogger, Signum sine tinnitu by Guy Kawasaki and Seth’s own Blog are a handful of the blogs that move mountains of audience attention around the internet on a word.

  Seth says it better.

  The math behind viral blogs is astonishing. One person, $20 a month and an audience of several hundred thosand people! Even better, a viral blog stuffed with good ideas is going to influence millions of people who never even read the original. For example, Chris Anderson, posted his “Long Tail” idea on a blog. There are now 1,040,000 Google matches for the expression he invented.

My point?

No CATS.

CAT-TAILS — long tails.

Seth says it better, but I say it PRETTY DARN WELL myself.

Liz Strauss