“Why do you blog?”

Simple question, is it not? When I ask this question I receive the usual responses:

• Blogging seems like fun.
• Share experiences or therapeutic reasons.
• My friends were doing it, so I thought I would try it.
• I want to show of my skill or professionalism in X area.
• I want to make money online.
• The desire to meet new people.
• I want to live a secret life (escape life).

Blogging can be a different experience for everyone. There is one thing that puzzles me. Why do people believe that no one has an interest in what they do or say? Is that a paradox? People blog to share their thoughts publicly, hoping someone will read it (not necessarily a lot of people). Many want to be popular or successful online, yet have a hard time believing anyone would have an interest in what they do or say. If you are one of those people, do not feel bad because you are not alone. I read an article today where Zac Efron could not believe the paparazzi have an interest in him:

“I had no idea that anyone could ever care. That happens to, like, big stars. I woke up and my dad told me that I was in a newspaper on the beach”"he made fun of me, he said I was “˜frollicking.’”

One does not have to have fame to be interesting. Do not forget the truly famous start of with a small audience. Most people start at zero and work their way up through levels of success. Let’s look at the smaller scale of how people seek out people they are interested in:

• Ever looked up someone on MySpace that you have not seen in a while, found the person, then browsed their pictures, videos, comments, etc.? Did you share what you learned with others?
• Have you found a writer you liked and looked for other sites the writer might have?
• Do you read personal blogs where the writer talks about someone anonymously and you have an interest in what the anonymous person does or says?
• Do you follow gossip online? Geek? Celebrity? Startup? The type does not matter because one is not better than the other.
• If you said yes to #4, have you ever written about what you found? Did you check out the facts to confirm it was true?
• Have you ever subscribed to a Twitter feed of someone you have never met and never talked to on the phone?

I think I proved my point. We have interest in people the general public has never heard of and if you have a site or a social profile anywhere with friends, there are people that are interested in you. Those are the people you know of. Most are quietly interested, which is why it can be easy to forget they are there. An example, the guys and I did a super stream last Friday. On each stream the number of viewers is displayed. I was not surprised to receive an email informing me of a tip to resolve my wide-angle camera/lighting problem and the person said approximately 30-40 people watched the majority of the time because the stream was being watched in a company’s break room. You think those people (not a static 30-40 people mind you) had an opinion about what they saw? Do you think they voiced their opinion? If they did not, does that stop them from sharing their thoughts at another time, to different people? They might blog about it. Talk to their spouse about it. Tell their best friend about our stream and the impression the three of us made on him/her. A similar example, I mentioned Seesmic a couple of times to Scrivs (in the 3by9 podcast), and he checked out their videos. Does Loic know? Highly unlikely even though I spoke of it publicly.

What is the point here? If you publish something online you want people to be interested in you. Perhaps you only want 100 versus 1M people due to the additional pressures being under a spotlight that big brings but 100 people is more than the average person has. To someone not active online 100 strangers following you are a lot of people. Whether it is one person or 500,000 people, it is up to you to be able to handle the praise and criticisms that come with being recognizable (and you ARE recognizable if you publish content online to someone). The more people interested in you, the less room you have for saying something stupid, not checking your facts, acting unprofessional in a professional environment, etc. To conclude, below is a very smooth response from Zac as a guide for one approach to handling negative criticism:

Even when I bring up notorious “Queen of Mean” gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who is obsessed with insinuating that Efron-whom he’s nicknamed “Zacquisha”-is gay, Efron’s response is almost surreally nice: “I know it’s very addictive to read that kind of stuff. It’s entertainment. Perez has obviously struck a chord in the public eye. He’s doing something right. That deserves admiration-I think he does a great job. Um-” He pauses for a moment, then adds, “Honestly, if the worst he can say about me is that I’m gay, then I think I’ll be fine. I can handle it.”