Archive for December 4th, 2009

This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:

See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project

Previous article: Brand extensions vs Brand Building

BLOGTASTIC: You can’t be famous just by blogging…

Go online and look at some of the A-list bloggers that you know about. I bet that 99% of these people will be involved in cool jobs and projects—beyond just being bloggers.

They lead interesting lives. Most likely, they are all working on exciting things when they are not online. They speak at conferences, write books, contribute to other magazines, participate in charitable causes etc. More importantly, life-beyond-blogging is important for them.

Sure, you can point to people who are famous in the blogging world. Let’s consider a few types of famous bloggers:

Professional bloggers:  These are a few special people who have become famous because they are bloggers. These people are the exceptions to everything we’re going to discuss. These people work very hard each day on their blog. For full-time bloggers, the blog is their professional identity. As you know, building a powerful identity (in any field) is hard work, and it takes continuous effort to build and sustain.

Take a look at my friend Amit Agarwal’s blog Digital Inspiration. It is a powerhouse of information on how to make the mot out of various hardware and software tools that are out there. Amit became a professional blogger a few years ago. It seems like he is now working more than what he ever had worked. He loves what he is doing and may not consider this as “work” but the effort is enormous and everyone can see that.

Celebrity Bloggers: Celebrities have a fan base that will (to some degree) follow them wherever they go. Whenever a celebrity enters the blogging world, a portion of their fan base will start following them.

Two Indian movie mega stars Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bacchan started blogging in 2008. Both of them have very different styles of blogging. What is common is the number of fans that comment for each and every one of their blog posts. Sometimes the number of comments exceed 1000 per blog post (Eg: Take a look at one of the recent posts by Aamir Khan announcing his new movie Three Idiots. That one post has 2565 comments as of today)

Industry veterans: These people can be venture capitalists, CEOs, doctors, researchers, or anyone who has already achieved fame within their own industry. These successful individuals leverage their professional reputation within their field when they enter the blogging world. Industry veterans have a following in their own circles. Imagine the effect when a noted industry veteran announces at a conference, “I’ve started a blog.” You can be sure that some of their peers, as well as up-and-comers in the field, will read that blog.

When it comes to Venture Capitalists, there are a number of them that have a big following. People like Brad Feld (Foundry Group) and Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) are very active and have a ton of insights for Entrepreneurs.

You might also look at serial entrepreneurs like Jason Cohen and Joel Spolsky. Be warned that if you visit their sites once, there is no going back. It is like entering an online University.

If you belong to one of these three groups, then you have probably achieved some degree of fame. People will follow your blog because you write it. However, for the rest of us, we have to build our readership base and fame through persistence and hard work.

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Blogging Tip: Have the “right” expectations from your projects

If you want to become world-famous through your blog, then you are really dreaming. You might achieve this dream, just like you could buy a winning lottery ticket. However, most of us will never achieve that level of success.

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Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow

Tagged as: aamir khan, amit agarwal, amitabh bacchan, brad feld, fred wilson, jason cohen, joel spolsky

My article this week is about timing. There is an old saying “Experience is what you get, right after you needed it”.

There are things that you can time, the coffee maker, the bus schedule and so forth. There are many more things that you cannot time and attempting to time them is a mistake.

For Example: timing the stock market, similar to gambling in Las Vegas, where everyone knows the game is rigged and plays anyway. Attempting to time the stock market will eventually get you if you are playing alone. That’s why successful stock brokers get paid no matter the outcome of your transaction with them.

Timing certain types of projects is also a mistake. I work in the large scale software industry and if a project is an addition to an existing product, timing makes sense and indeed is necessary. If, on the other hand, we are building something completely new to the world, we cannot time it, and we are almost never able to resist the urge.

For things that are new to the world, much must be learned, therefor the time required is the time needed to acquire the knowledge to complete the project; be that brain surgery or a new software product. The knowledge and the skill must be acquired over time, a practice must be developed that retains that skill and then the project can be timed. Usually at that point you have completed at least the first pass and are ready to move on. Only after you have the experience can you time the next iteration, and even then, if you are doing something that is new to you, your team or the world, you need to take the time to learn.

I’ve said is almost all of my articles, you will not get where you are going alone, you need help. Help can come in many forms: parents, friends, acquaintances, government structures, business structures, etc. The number one thing that, as business people, we can find to help us are teachers. Find someone better at what you do than you are and learn from them. Learn everything you can, from everyone you can. Be discriminating in your teachers though, find the best, if you find someone better, switch. Move fast and learn to learn fast.

With learning comes obligation. As I said before, you need to learn from great teachers, you must have something to offer them in return like money, time, etc. In return you must spend some of your human capital to learn: time, lost opportunity, money etc. Education comes with a price, you must pay it. When you stop learning you are finished.

Another point about the obligation of learning; you must teach. There is a Buddhist maxim “To know and to not do is to not know”. Teaching cements your knowledge, it is a mechanism of our minds that when we teach we learn as well, the subject we are teaching. So to learn, you must teach, find a student, and be a student.

Go find something new to learn! Stretch your mind and teach someone else something new! Do it for yourself.

This article was contributed by Thomas Frasher, co-founder of Active Garage. You can follow Thomas on Twitter at tfrasher.

Tagged as: Action, Branding, Communication, execution, Intellectual Property, leaders, Leadership, possibilities, purpose, Return on Investment