An example, in my last article I said: “If you notice I still disagree with Bill but I didn’t comment again over there. Next week I’ll explain why….”. It’s next week and I don’t feel like talking about that anymore. I turned comments off on the article because I was tired of talking about it then. Then guilt set in. I said I was going to write about it, I should write about it, but I’m not feeling the topic anymore. At all. I opted not to write it because I’m not a fan of putting up “something” just for the sake of putting something up.

This is an interesting dilemma for me because I can pre-write articles and when it comes time to publish them, I have no enthusiasm on the topic anymore. Looking at this in-depth (it’s 2009, the year to face the truth!) I realized it’s not the topic per se…

It’s the talking. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Once I write it most times (at least lately) I don’t have anything else I want to say. However, if I publish the article and leave comments open, I need to monitor and respond to comments…about a topic I don’t have any interest in talking about anymore. On top of talking about it in comments I also talk to those who contact me via email, AIM (instant messenger), text message, phone, Skype, etc.

This begs the question: is it that I’m “really” not into the topic in the first place? Am I becoming anti-social? Or is it as simple that once I write an article I’m ready to move on to the next thing?

Yeah, that’s it. The last one.

Yes, I “could” keep comments open and not respond but I detest that. Why start a conversation if the writer intends for it to only be a one-way conversation? What I might do is have one “big” topic and keep comments open on that. I’m still figuring it out.

Feel free to keep emailing, texting, AIMing, etc. I don’t feel a drain in those areas at all. Just when I go to publish an article. Interesting, eh?

My point…don’t be afraid to do what is best for you on your site. The social media people will tell you that you must keep comments open because (insertstupidassanswerhere). In the end, you should do what you feel comfortable doing. Make it easy for people to contact you so they don’t feel the only option is via comments.

“You wanna run Onyxia’s Lair?”

I logged on determined to level my mining but he said, “Come ON, it will be fun!” so I said, “Sure…why not? I’m on my way”. It was just the two of us…two Level 80 Death Knights. He realized Ventrilio was still working from the ex-guild so we hopped on.

I arrived and he started with the instructions on what was going to happen, what to do, what to avoid, etc. I had been in Ony’s lair before but I was with an 80 Paladin and Druid…more along for the ride than anything else. I was so excited to be there the first time I remember her throwing me back and going up in the air where I couldn’t hit her. He was well aware of my instance shyness (okay, fear) but kind of forgot as he was telling me my instructions. I gave a nervous laugh and he laughed…said it was going to be fine.

He was tanking and ironically I had one hell of a critical strike right when he did an Obliterate. What that means is that I hit for a lot of damage, drew aggro away from him, and I couldn’t heal myself because no diseases were on Ony because the Obliterate wiped them all away. I died, and that caused him to die. We ran back, no worries about the wipe, and went at her again. This time she fell and I squealed with delight.

And laughed.
And clapped my hands.
And squealed some more.
And laughed some more.

He couldn’t help but laugh because I was so happy. He kept saying he couldn’t believe I was THAT happy. I told him I couldn’t put into words how happy I was. He was so glad I was happy he said, “Well, what else can we do?” and I said, “He asks the chick that doesn’t run instances” and he came up with Zul’Gurub. I heard of it but I didn’t know where it was. He said go to Stranglethorn Vale, amazed that I was “that much” of an instance noob.

He had not done the instance in years, didn’t really remember what happened with the bosses so we were winging it. We didn’t finish because it was late, he had to go, we started horsing around as we wiped – but we had a great time. It was EXACTLY what I needed. We both screwed up and died but the world didn’t come to an end. One time he aggro’d about 10 mobs. Another time we killed a boss and out of no where something like 20 mobs (spiders I think) came at us. My ghoul, on passive, was feared into some mobs. We were feared or knocked back into mobs – it was hilarious and fun. He was eating muffins, took pictures and showed them to me while we waited for diseases to wear off. We sincerely had a blast.

I conquered my last demon from 2008. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I see my weak points and I came up with a plan to improve my play style. In the oddest of circumstances I met what seems like a good friend in World of Warcraft. He was patient and understanding of my fear while he teased and joked with me keeping it light. Towards the end I was plotting strategies “We should knock out those mobs then I can bring out the ghoul and gargoyle without worrying about fears…”.

I’m happy. Thank you Brett…you’re the best!

Completely cheesy but I have tears in my eyes writing this. I’m that damn happy and this happened about seven hours ago. Tyme White…ran an instance…and pvp’d, and I’m level 80, and I have my first purple piece of gear…

1) Many of the active people in comments weren’t around so comments would be light.
2) From what I can tell most the people that comment on my site don’t use Twitter.

Writing the article, I knew, would be an unpopular move (in terms of interaction) but I felt the need to express myself on the topic so I did it anyway. My core audience is the average, normal everyday non-geek person (mainstream-ish audience). Twitter has almost no appeal, Facebook is for friends only (people they know), they have no desire to try every new application that comes on the web. Matter of fact, their internet time is limited because they spend more time living their lives offline that interacting online. I’m lucky, I have the opportunity to find out things about my audience one on one.

Most people with sites aren’t that lucky. They are writing in the dark hoping to find people who connect with their content. That is where I think they fall into the pitfall of over-caring about traffic. People start blogs in hopes someone reads them, they check their stats to see if anyone is reading, then get trapped in being focused on the stats.

And unfortunately begin to care very little about the readers themselves.

You see this all the time. “I’ll do what I want, how I want, when I want but oh yeah, let me check those stats!”. When I see this I wonder how they expect to get traffic without understanding their audience? But tell me this: if you go to a restaurant and they don’t have what you want, do you stay? If the dealership doesn’t have the car you want do you look elsewhere? If the boy/girl you like doesn’t have the traits you’re interested in, do you make him/her your boy/girlfriend?

No.

Then why, while you’re doing what you want, when you want, how you want (with no knowledge about what YOUR readers want) should any reader stay on your site? What have you done for them lately?

And there you have, in a nutshell, why social sites are popular. Easy to gain followers with little to no effort.

What he didn’t expect was for me to think, “WTF! This mofo is going DOWN”, resume my body, heal real quick and destroy him. He “really” didn’t expect me to make it a point to kill him every time I saw him. And to tell my friends to destroy him on sight. That one cowardly (but brilliant) move cost him a lot of gold in repair bills (but hell, let’s admit it…one could say it was worth it because what he did was epic). See, if you’re going to receive honor from my death you have to earn it. One day I’ll lose interest and I won’t kill him on sight anymore (I only saw him twice since then…not sure about my friends but they kill Alliance on sight anyway).

One shouldn’t live in fear but one should take a moment to anticipate the reaction or repercussions of what one does.

Many people use their blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. to rant, snark, and other wise express themselves. In many of those writings the writer is sharing an experience, talking about something he/she does or doesn’t like, telling someone off, disagreeing with someone, agreeing with someone only to have others disagree with their opinion…it comes in many flavors. Do you think about how the person or company you’re writing or talking about will take what you’ve said? If you say something behind someone’s back did you think about how he/she will take it if they found out what you said?

Going through sites for 9rules one of the things I look for is the ability to take criticism and how a person deals with confrontation. Most times it is impossible to tell unless the writer goes through it a lot but that doesn’t stop me from looking. It is easy to sit back with the “shield” of the internet and throw stones criticizing people, many times with no real basis (you know, like facts) to back up what was written. It is very easy to take a “persona” and try to detach yourself from the persona saying the things that could land one in hot water. The common thought process is that the person writing will never see the person being written about, so why not?

Think again.

With conferences, meet ups and most important social networks the ability to “bump into” the person being written about is much greater. A common past time on You Tube is for someone to put a video up complaining about something and asking his/her viewers to leave comments or contact the person he/she is talking about. Voice your opinion! That turns into an avalanche of criticism for the person that made the original video. Did you expect that?

Did you expect the person you talked about behind their back to find out about it?

Did you expect that your public enthusiasm for X could block your company for getting sponsorships from A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I because X is their competitor?

Did you expect your blog entry about skipping work to play Warcraft with your friend (which you put a picture of on your site) would get your friend fired?

Be careful what you say and how you say it yet be true to yourself.

There is a blog called Big Bear Butt that has the reputation of being a Druid blog. The about page says:

BigBearButt offers his cranky opinions of a long time World of Warcraft casual feral druid about druid life, the WoW world, and everything.

Reading that, I would think he writes about Druid issues and the game world. Especially since his blog is called Big Bear Butt (if you play a Druid in bear form you get the reference). The author also plays a Hunter (nothing wrong with that) and started writing about Hunter experiences. The other day he wrote about a Hunter bug on his “Druid” blog. A well-known Hunter blogger, in fun, wrote a post about Druids talking about Hunter issues on their Druid blogs. The Druid blogger, seeing the entry, wrote a response causing the Hunter blogger to write an apology. This is all fine and dandy but the root of the problem (the REAL problem) was: The Druid blogger doesn’t like being told what he can/cannot write about on his blog. A Druid is not the only character he plays and he doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed into only writing about Druids. I understand that completely. As a blogger I’ve gone through the exact same issue (How many domains have I had? Yeah, we won’t talk about that…).

He should have thought about that when the site was first started though.

The Druid blogger also writes at WoW Insider and has a Druid column. As he stated in his article he thought perhaps the WoW Insider gig helped define him as a Druid blogger. Perhaps it did but didn’t his Druid blog help get him the WoW Insider gig in the first place? Something had to define him as an “authority” on Druids. His Druid-focused blog probably did that.

So what do you do if you start writing one topic and you want to expand your focus? Give your readers options. You cannot forget that your readers subscribed to you for a reason. Maybe it was because they considered you an “authority” on the topic. Maybe over time the reader started to like “you” and doesn’t care what you write about (optimal solution but not the norm). People subscribe for different reasons but the main reason is because they enjoy/learn from the content being published at the time he/she subscribed. Adding other topics will be considered off-topic to them.

Which is exactly how I feel about Big Bear Butt’s content. I subscribed for his Druid and game world perspectives. I have less than zero interest in his Hunter escapades. I have Hunter blogs I subscribe to for that – and there are tons of them out there.

RSS makes it very easy to have both worlds – especially if you are using WordPress. Offer your reader multiple feeds so they can opt-out or opt-in on the information they want. Thank goodness Big Bear Butt is using WordPress so I changed the feed I have for him (which contains everything to):

http://thebigbearbutt.com/category/druiding/feed

http://thebigbearbutt.com/category/patch-news/feed

Redefining the feeds reduced my information overload ratio for his site by 100% because the majority of stuff coming from his blog wasn’t anything I was interested in. Yes I increased the number of feeds but I reduced the amount of content coming to me.

Consider offering multiple feeds for your readers if you decide you want to expand. WordPress is great in that it grows with you and makes doing this as easy as adding /feed to the end of a category or tag URL. More important, when starting a blog take some time to think about what you “really” want to write about and potentially avoid this issue in the first place.

So here I am writing an article I don’t feel like writing and I don’t like the ones I pre-wrote. On my own site I publish when I feel like it. Here? I refuse to miss a day. Then I realized what I’m doing right now is what we all do to some extent.

• Isn’t that what people do when they get in their cars and drive to the job they can’t stand?
• Isn’t that what people do when they roll over from having sex with the spouse they fell out of love with a long time ago?
• Isn’t that what people do when they go to the bowling league they somehow got pressured into joining but don’t want to cause drama by canceling?
• When you contain yourself when you smile at your co-worker/boss/insert-person-here when you really want to tell them off?
• When you wash those windows do you like doing it?

We all do things we don’t want to do everyday. Some people do it all day everyday. I can’t recall the last time I was enthusiastic about cooking. Or yard work. I can’t dance when I do those two things (without looking like an idiot).

What I don’t understand is why people continue to do things they don’t like without trying to improve the situation? Get a better job. Get a divorce or rediscover the love. Kill the league and join another. Learn how to tell people off without them realizing you did (that’s fun). Put on some music while you wash the windows and dance.

People do things out of habit. My Mom will do things on auto-pilot and she doesn’t realize she’s doing it. It used to drive me nuts because I would put something down for a moment and she’d auto-pilot (move it). Although auto-pilot comes in handy if she happened to have gone to the store, picked something up she thought I’d like and ends up auto-piloting (cooking) me a meal…anyway, that was her way of getting through chores she didn’t like doing.

In the situations I described above many times people fall into habit, a routine. Sex MWF, same club with the same people on the same days, same meals on the same days, get brand new clothes and they look just like the old clothes.

When you went to college even if you had a blast, did you want to stay there? You love your job, do you want to hold the same position five years from now? Do you really want your kids to remain kids? See the difference?

Habit does not equal fun. Or enjoyment. Or progression. Or growth. Habit means stuck in a rut.

To advance in life sometimes you have to kill the habits.

To reward myself for writing the article I’m not in the mood to write, I’m going to do something completely spontaneous – breaking a habit of what I’d normally do on a weekend.

Have a good one!

There is a girl who does music videos. Her name is Tina and she wants to be a singer. You can view one of her videos here. She has 7100 subscribers on YouTube and a large following on MySpace. There is a concerted effort to encourage her to continue making videos. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether or not she can sing or but it has been commented many times on her videos the door to being a serious singer was an option.

Jack likes Jill and Jill likes Jack back and would like to try something with Jack. Although Jack desires Jill, Jack never attempts to take the relationship to another level because he doesn’t want to mess up the friendship (insert any reason here). One could say the door to be with Jack was never open to Jill because Jack closed the door and refused to open it.

You want to do a daily blog about technology. You work full-time, have three kids and a spouse. By the time you are able to sit down and write it is late and you have to prepare for the next day. Writing on weekends to get ahead is out because weekends are family time. One could say that as much as you’d like to do a daily blog about technology it isn’t a realistic option with everything going on in your life.

Shel Israel wrote a long article about his video debacle. Shel said:

When GNTV launched, I was not quite ready for prime time. If I was an actor, I would say I was prepared for a summer stock script reading. When the curtain went up, I found myself instead at center stage of an opening night on Broadway with some determined hecklers in the audience who managed for a while to distract me. Most people seem to agree that I got better.

What people agree on is that the video quality (the way it was shot) improved. Again, I’ll let you determine if his videos are good (the videos have been removed so if you saw them the decision is yours) but, as commented many times, his strength is writing not video. Some have said that the door to Shel being successful in video was never a real option in the first place.

In each of these cases it is technically possible these unrealistic options to become realistic but it would take an extreme effort to accomplish this. Tina could possibly sing with the right coaching. Jack could be with Jill if Jack overcame his insecurities. You could possibly do a daily blog with the support of your family and friends helping to free your time or write articles. Shel could possibly be better at videos if he worked hard at it (which would mean doing it for the love of doing videos not for money which is what he is doing now). Even if they worked hard would they be successful? Would Tina’s voice change so much that she’d be able to recognized as a singer by her peers as she desires? Would Jack and Jill’s relationship work if Jack’s insecurities overrode what Jill wanted? Would your spouse be happy sacrificing his/her time with you so you can blog? Can Shel change enough that not only would his videos be interesting but he’d understand the medium he is trying to become successful in?

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” – Helen Keller

Instead of focusing on the “closed door” (being a singer) Tina would be happy being an entertainer. Instead of focusing on losing a friendship Jack could focus on gaining a partner in life. Instead of doing a daily blog maybe a weekly blog or a topic that is less time consuming would be more realistic. Instead of being in the videos perhaps Shel would be a better producer or editor.

Unfortunately many people spend too much time looking at the closed door that was never going to open (in the way they wanted) in the first place.

The problem many entrepreneurs have is acknowledging there is a problem that needs to be resolved. This is particularly difficult if the site is a part of the echo chamber – a group of people who admire what you do and encourage you because they like you…not because you’re doing a good job. I realized there was a problem with the submission/acceptance process at 9rules and decided to fix it.

Part 1: Scrivs

If you remember previous rounds they were random, with perhaps a month or so lead time to submit during a 24 hour period. I always hated that. I mentioned it to Scrivs in the past but it was the 9rules style to hold submissions that way. You can imagine my surprise when Scrivs said that we should announce the dates in advance.

Once I realized he was serious, I jumped out of my chair and started dancing. I couldn’t help it. While he’s asking me how I wanted it handled I’m trying to dance and type at the same time. I said I wanted to have submissions once a quarter, he nailed the dates, and moved on to something else. I was spent from dancing and being so excited.

Why was this so important? It makes it very clear we are adding new members and for those that don’t agree with that, 9rules isn’t the place for them. There are a couple of other reasons I’ll get into shortly.

Part 2: The Quality of Submissions

I wanted to improve the quality of submissions. This round the quality was fantastic. We received a ton of submissions from new blogs that are awesome…but we require 6 months of consistent posting to be a member so they will be submitting next round. Anyway, 9rules is often mentioned as a place to go to get exposure for your site. The site mentioning 9rules rarely mentioned we require quality content. Getting submissions is fine but I hate telling people no. Especially large numbers of people.

Instead of writing the normal site tips I tried to get people to take a deeper look at their blogs. By announcing the rounds in advance it detracts from the need to get in “right now” and make the improvements they feel the need to make to improve their site. I encouraged people to take the time needed to improve their blogs even if it meant submitting in August.

Part 3: Going Through All Those Sites…

I wanted to educate people how we go through sites and what we look for. One way of doing this: we held a stream where we showed our reaction going through sites. Again, this is something the average site owner never sees. We spent an hour going through sites and a couple of hours having fun with our members and readers.

At a later date, Scrivs called for a meeting to go through sites, which we did on Skype. I set a date for the remaining part of the list (the bigger part) to be complete (in a very authoritative tone too). We then combined our results and I made the final decisions on acceptance.

Two weeks vs. two-three months. Yeah baby! Thanks guys because I know you guys were jammed with work! XOXOXOXOXO

Part 4: Feedback IS Important

The only way to improve is to know what was done wrong in the first place. This time I tried to address this in a more “blunt” manner. On the acceptance list I named the common reasons why blogs were rejected. Most people could view the list, realize their blog fit in one of those categories, and have closure. I made myself available to answer questions and it’s working out well. I couldn’t be happier.

Mission Accomplished: Now What?

I accomplished my goals and I’m ridiculously happy. Don’t mistake that for me being done. Many entrepreneurs slack once they reach a goal. Not this kid…I create a new goal! Since 9rules is a more mature company I love how “maturely” we handled the submission process. Thanks to the guys for helping me make Round 6 a kick-ass success.

Thanks to all of you for believing in us.

there’s no other love
there’s nobody else I’m thinking of
only a baby as special
how could I ever forget you
and let the moment slip away
we’ve been here for a while
and I just wanna take you away
you got me doing things I never do
I can’t stop feenin and dreaming about you
and about your love it feels so real to me
you know what to say
and you know just what to do
come get me
whatcha got for me
I wanna see
I’ve been waiting way too long
got me losing my cool
don’t know what I’m gonna do
you got me going

The song is about a man’s love for a woman but it can be applied to love in general. One person loves another person very much and wants to take it to another level. Further in the song they say “just let me be, be all that you need” because after waiting, the struggles, etc. it’s time to move forward – together. Passion, excitement, endurance, commitment, loyalty – the song has it all. Now that we have an understanding about love and passion, I’m about to apply this to writing online…because I’m smooth like that.

Passion shows…

It is somewhat easy to tell when someone is passionate about their writing and those that are doing it because it’s “the thing”. Those blogging because it’s the hot new thing are experiencing a crush with blogging. Bloggers that are expressing and sharing their passions are like the excerpted lyrics above.

When a person loves or is passionate about their blogging it shows. The person does not have to say, “I love to blog!” for it to show just like a person doesn’t have to say “I love you” for the person he or she loves to know it or know when someone loves you in return. Actions speak louder than words. Actions speak when there is silence.

The person that is passionate about their writing will embrace all aspects of it. The blogger will pick a decent host (to the best of their ability) and, if he or she encounters hosting problems, will rectify the situation. The person who is passionate about their content (meaning their content is important) will take steps to back it up in case something goes wrong. The person who is passionate about their blog will tweak it in an attempt to improve it. This does not mean the person will morph into a designer but the blog will look like a well-cared lawn – some look better than others but one can tell when a lawn is being maintained and when it is not.

When a person is passionate about their writing and cares about their users the blog will have the features a user would look for: about page, easy to subscribe to the blog, perhaps options to subscribe depending on the target audience, contact page, easy navigation, tags and or categories, interact with readers, etc. The content will be published when promised and the presentation of the content matters to ensure the user is able to easily read their content.

Round 6: May 7th, 2008

9rules has a new round coming up. When I look at blogs I look for the passion and love to show on the blog. When I load a blog in my browser and I’m puzzled about the direction of the blog, confused while reading an article what the author is trying to say or look at a site and my corneas are damaged because the site has colors that should be a sin to put together, I remember when I felt a lack of desire to blog and was blogging for reasons other than passion – and it showed. One of the reasons why we do not accept new blogs into 9rules is because so many people are excited about blogging and dive in, only to bow out a couple of months later.

It’s hard to think of original content and that is where passion gives an edge. The person that is passionate about their blog will come up with original content, will track down that interview, will confirm whether a lead is accurate, will take extra care creating a tutorial, writing a review, explaining design or programming elements, etc. The extra effort isn’t a chore, it can be a joy, something exciting and fun. It’s an essential part of the process.

If you don’t feel the passion or the love for blogging, why are you doing it?

I understand what he was trying to do. He wants to tap in on the MySpace crowd. Perfectly understandable, however should this be done at the cost of weakening your brand? Diluting (or polluting) your image? Is your MySpace an accurate depiction of you and your company? If it’s not, um, why not?

The reason why I receive these emails is because someone wants exposure, feedback, recognition – if it’s a commercial venture they might want that big payout. The problem is they don’t really look within to see why they aren’t getting that “respect” they crave. Respect is earned and online ventures usually have one shot to get a person’s attention. I would have been extremely impressed if he showed some maturity and professionalism on his MySpace page. The fact he didn’t have the wisdom to do that, a very simple business decision, turned me off not only on him, but his company.

Because in the end, businesses are looking for affiliations with other companies that would boost their sales/image/etc. not weaken it. That means a business owner needs to be able to make smart business decisions, with a strategy in mind. What one does today online will have an effect tomorrow.

My advice? If you have a MySpace page with your business name in the URL (or you want to tap in on the MySpace crowd), take your personal crap off of it, and use the same care about what goes on the front of your MySpace page as you would your web site if there is a need for respect by your peers in your niche or your business relies on a strong brand (guess what, most do). That doesn’t mean you can’t have your fun and you have to be boring. I have lots of fun but I also know the delicate balance of maintaining respect/professionalism.

And for the record, I emailed the guy and asked him about his MySpace page. He responded while I was writing this article. He explained he was “following the crowd”. Well, a business owner should be a leader not a follower. He’s going to tap into the MySpace crowd but he’s going to be smarter on how he does it.