Just a quick thought for you today –

One of the most important things that helps us keep going is the momentum we build we build with our blogs. Momentum can be summed up in several different ways, but it all comes down to the individual blog.

While some bloggers might see a good amount of comments coming in for each post, other bloggers might see a great response on twitter or facebook instead.

Take a look at how your blog has momentum so you can focus your efforts toward the platforms of communities that seem to be contributing to the momentum of your blog. Get involved with the conversations on twitter, pose new questions and offer answers or thoughts in your comments threads … it doesn’t matter so long as you stick with it and keep moving forward.

Image credit

Back in 2007, Brian published the 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer, which resonated with both the blogging and writing community due to it’s powerful message, simplicity, and surprising presentation. A couple days ago, he published a follow up to that classic. The team also provided a graphical rendition of the post, which you can find below.

Enjoy … and start writing more.

Want to share this awesome poster?

Visit Copyblogger for the original poster.

But blogging requires focus. The day-in, day-out routine of writing, posting, responding, tweaking, maintaining, and upgrading a blog requires a certain level of discipline. When you lack focus:

• You waste time on secondary tasks.
• You waste money on secondary pursuits.
• You stress your time management skills.
• You disappoint people who matter.
• You miss vital opportunities in moments of distraction.

This is the age of wearing many hats. Look at the average Twitter bio and it’s a string of somewhat related roles. We are designers, bloggers, writers, consultants, coaches, marketers, social media mavens, gurus, and whizzes. But when you find your focus, you can pour your energy, time, and resources into pursuing one goal with excellence.

This doesn’t mean you won’t launch different initiatives and projects along the way. It simply means that you’ll have the focus to push each one to some kind of maturity or completion.

Here’s the challenge: Choose your focus. Decide now what your big goals will be, what tasks will flow from those goals, and what you ultimately want to accomplish this year with your blogging.

Then… spill it. What’s your focus?

Right out of the gates let me declare that we have absolutely no idea what web technologies might exist in six months, so I don’t think coming up with a rigid annual calendar for your blog is possible. Even if it were, it wouldn’t be a very good idea. Agility is a key trait of successful bloggers, but so is intentionality.

Right now is the time to brainstorm about your goals, plans, and topics for the next few months. Here are some headings for your notes…

What Is My Blog’s Primary Purpose?

When you decide what that is, don’t back away from it. Critics will come. Traffic will fluctuate. The temptation to cut corners will always be in front of us. Don’t do it. Stay the course. If you’re out to change the world, don’t settle for making an extra buck.

What Is My Blog’s Major Message?

You’re going to write 365 posts next year, right? But you ultimately have a major message to communicate and everything else just builds on that message. Identify it and protect it. Write it down.

Who Is My Intended Audience?

This is not the same as asking who is my audience? It’s who is your intended audience? Who do you hope to reach? If you’re blogging about sweaters for dogs and your blog’s adoption among cat breeders is up, you need to shift.

How Will I Expand?

You may need to launch another blog, add another category, join another social network, or offer a membership area. How do you intend to grow your blog’s footprint in the coming year? Write it down.

How Will I Streamline?

I’m guessing you tried some things this year that haven’t been working. That course-altering plugin you installed slows your page down while offering none of the intended increase in traffic. Kill it. That wing of your blog dedicated to that off topic hobby of yours is costing you readers. Kill it. What do you need to cut away from your blog to refine your focus?

What Will I Learn This Year?

Determine an area of blogging or online marketing in which you’ve been behind and take a course, read a book, or attend some kind of meetup group to discuss it. Learn. Grow. Leaders are learners, or they don’t lead long.

What Will I Unlearn This Year?

Spinning gif’s are out. So are webrings. You once learned these were cool, and now you’re way behind. Open yourself up for all of your assumptions to be challenged and enter the new year with fewer preconceived ideas about what success must look like.

What Series’ Can I Write?

This is something you can really dig into. Brainstorm this. What are ten major themes you want to address, with anywhere from two to six posts about each theme? How can they flow logically and where will you take your readers as the series’ progress?

How Can I Invest In Others?

Knowledge was intended to be shared. How can you teach? Whom can you mentor? Come up with actionable means of passing knowledge along to others. Maybe it’s a Posterous group for bloggers. Perhaps it’s a virtual coffee once per month with leaders in your niche. How will you selflessly share knowledge this year?

Who Will I Connect With?

Glance through your feed reader or Twitter list. Whom have you observed without any interaction, and what will you do to change that? Successful people stand on the shoulders of others who have already gone a greater distance. With whom do you need to connect in January?

What questions did I miss? What answers do you have?

I know, I know. Rocket science right there. Clearly, I just totally simplified an extremely difficult concept.

BUT! Just because someone is allowing you as a guest on their blog, doesn’t mean you should automatically feel like you can use and abuse their blog for whatever you like. Oh no. Do this too many times and you’ll get booted from the guest blogging community quicker than you can say “I suck.”

First, let’s assess your motives. Do you:

• Want to promote yourself?
• Want to link to a bunch of different websites?
• Want to get some affiliate links in?

If so, then stop reading this immediately. Guest blogging is not for you if any of the aforementioned bullet points fit into your strategy.

Promotion is not necessary, for one, because most blogs will want you to have a pretty little author byline (craft this carefully) that links back to your website. No need to try to slyly get links into your post only going back to your website, or blatantly referring to yourself in the content

On the second bullet point, linking to other websites is natural. And by natural, I mean, having one or two in there (unless you’re going over Wordpress Plugins, or different software, where it would make sense to link each) can be beneficial, but having links riddled through your content like it’s been the target of a machine gun is not necessary or beneficial in any way.

Let’s go over some common guest blogging etiquette that you should (hopefully) know by now.

1. Make sure your content fits their topic. Yes, this is a pretty basic rule, but you wouldn’t believe how many people ignore this one simple fact. If you already have a post written up and you “kinda sorta think you might be able to finagle it to almost completely fit the topic of the blog” then you probably want to offer your content elsewhere.

2. Link internally- bloggers LOVE when you find a relevant topic within their blog that you’re pitching, and link it into your post before sending it over. Linking internally to a website is not only beneficial to the blog owner for SEO reasons, but taking such a subtle yet useful action will let the blog owner feel as if you’ve done this before and that you’re looking to benefit them more than yourselves.

3. Understand what the blog is looking for. Some blogs love when you get all crazy and spunky with your voice (I think I’m getting away with it here… am I??) and others want you to keep a voice that is uniform to the rest of the content.

You need to respect the wishes of the blog owner. Don’t get all cute and assume just because you think your writing style is awesome, that the blog owner things it is as well, will break their rules JUST FOR YOU. Most likely they won’t. Sometimes you have to dull it down a bit- you’ll learn when it’s appropriate.

4. Pay attention to the allowed number of links. Some (most) blogs allow linking inside the body of the post- and I think that’s a great thing. There’s always going to be resources you wish you could put in your post, or products/plug-in/services that naturally make sense to reference.

We’re also advocates of what we like and use, so it’s only natural we’ll want to include them if possible. Make sure you don’t try to slip extra links in there. Take heed to what they allow and don’t abuse this right, as mentioned earlier.

5. In real estate, the three most important words are… location, location, location!

In guest blogging, I guess it would be… promote, promote, promote! Not only are you mutual beneficiaries of your content, but by promoting your post on your various networks, you’re driving traffic to their site and also gaining readership for yourself as well. Blog owners DO notice spikes in traffic, so if you want to make an impact with your writing, promote the hell out of it.

6. Don’t rip off images from somewhere without attributing the proper rights underneath it. If the blog you’re posting on trusts you, you wouldn’t want them to get in trouble for having an image that wasn’t creative commons licensed or free to use, would you?

7. Engage your readers. If you’re getting comments… you know what you do? Oh yeah, respond! Now, if you’re guest posting in a lot of places it’s understandably hard to keep on top of responding (I might be guilty of this myself) but we’re only human.

8. Try your best to pop in once and a while if you can’t dedicate the time and you’re getting flooded with comments. Readers love when bloggers respond to them- and so do the blog owners.

Well, this post is getting ridiculously long, so I’m going to end it here. There are a billion different techniques and tactics you’ll learn from guest blogging, and remember: no two blogs are alike. You’re going to encounter different blog owners with different rules- honor them and enjoy the ride.

Guest blogging is an amazing way to write about things you may not cover in your blog, and a great way to gain exposure and readership, so go ahead and dive in. Don’t be afraid to let the blog owner know that you’re just getting your feet wet. Many will be happy to guide you through the process if you have great blogging skills.

Anybody have some tips they would like to add when venturing into guest blogging territory?

Image: thecyberhoodwatch.com

1. Refusing to repeat ideas means you have to constantly have new ones, which can be exhausting.
2. The web is more and more a real-time content engine. Yesterday’s great idea is buried under today’s inspiration.
3. People forget what you’re about if you don’t remind them.

One leadership expert often reminds his people that “vision leaks.” You can share it, but you’ll need to share it again in six weeks or everyone will forget it. That can be true of a blog’s audience as well. Our attention spans are shorter than ever, so if you want to be memorable, you have to update your readers’ memory often.

Your best ideas are certainly worth repeating, and if it’s not worth repeating, it’s probably not your best idea. I’ve been a public speaker for thirteen years and have spoken to the exact same crowd, three times per week for half a decade. That means I’ve spoken to one group of people close to 1,000 times. During that time, I learned that originality isn’t always possible. The alternative is the same basic ideas re-packaged and re-published in a new and fresh way.

Here’s the question for you… how do you re-package ideas in a fresh way? How should a blogger utilize repetition and how can she do it without becoming lazy in the process?

You can add widgets, bells, and whistles, but the absolute best addition to any blog is people who return for the value of the content and connections you provide. A community is made up of people who stay in tune with your content, with you as the blogger, and even with each other in one way or another.

What A Blog’s Community Looks Like

Even before the advent of the internet, a community was more than a mere geographical area within a set of prescribed boundaries. The word “community” has far more to do with the relationships between people inside it and how they interact with one another.

A blog’s community is enthusiastically tied to that blog’s brand and content. Members discuss content with one another, discover new connections within the circle, and contribute to the value of your blog. A community actually begins to shape the nature and personality of a blog over time and therefore, a community can be grown, but rarely controlled.

Why a Community is So Vital

If your blog is going to thrive, you need people to make contributions in the form of internal content (especially comments and discussion) but also to share your content with connections outside your community. One fact that Facebook understands well is that human relationships are far more important than directory listings and organic search results. Showing up in search results represents the infancy of the web while showing up in resources shared by people in relationships with one another is the future.

Without a community, your blog’s success is always on its last leg. Its survival is dependent upon a returning, faithful audience who grow to trust that you’ll continue to contribute value to their lives even when you miss a beat here and there.

How to Start Building Your Blog’s Community

I’m going to be writing about this issue more in depth in a multi-part series on building your blog’s community, but for now know this one dominating principle – be social. Connect with people. Speak their language, respond to their needs, and forge bridges of ongoing communication. Being social is far more important than joining social networks or using social tools.

Before I proceed with my series, what are your thoughts about online communities? How important are they? How do you start building them?

Your blogging success isn’t about your next post. It’s about all of your posts. It isn’t about a great headline, a huge list, or sweet graphics. It’s about the total package. Whether your blog is personal, corporate, or one of those that’s supposed to make you a millionaire tomorrow, your blog is really all about you.

Managing a blog requires keeping up with posting schedules, comment replies, topic assortment, and external sources. It’s the management of ideas, words, and peak traffic hours. Managing the blogger (yourself) is so much more vital. This is what I mean…

• Managing your body (diet, rest, exercise) prepares you for longevity.
• Managing your time and prioritizing correctly preserves your sanity.
• Managing your mind (reading, learning) empowers your words with greater impact.
• Managing your vision keeps you determined to grow your blog and your brand.
• Managing relationships is the essence of great community-building.

Anybody can manage a blog for a season. But are you managing yourself? It’s highly important! It’s vital.

What are you doing to prepare for the long haul?

Quantifying successful blogging is challenging. Some blogs that are highly successful in terms of influence can’t boast of large direct revenue while others that make a killing off of pay-per-click ads offer little real value to the world. And traffic alone isn’t always a great qualifier of successful blogging either. Analyzing traffic is tricky because the real story sometimes gets hidden beneath the numbers.

The real goal is readership. One devoted reader can be a more powerful ally than 100 random visitors. So the goal isn’t just to grab attention, but to stimulate real devotion. Great blogs rely on a great community of devoted, supportive fans.

How does a blogger build a community of truly devoted readers? The answer is simple, the execution is challenging – reach the heart. The reason you are loyal to certain brands has a lot more to do with your emotions than your mind. Daily, we make the choice to spend extra money on the things we value rather than going cheap because we’re emotionally devoted. So if you want to build a loyal, devoted readership, aim for the heart.

How do you engage the emotions to win the hearts of devoted readers?

1. Make people think… about themselves. Facts can be interesting, but facts that hit home are compelling. Human beings, by nature, are uncomfortable with change, but change we will when our emotions are involved. People don’t buckle up because they see a road sign – they do so because they’re in a fender bender that jolts them or they see a horrific accident.
2. Be a face and a name, not just a blog. What do Chris Brogan, Michael Hyatt, and Brian Solis all have in common? In addition to being successful bloggers who impact their respective industries, they each have an online persona that can be known in a unique way.
3. Push buttons. I heard a Christian minister say once that his role was to “comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” In many cases, our role as bloggers is to push buttons – to make people mad… or sad… or uncomfortable in some way.
4. Tell stories. Or at least make sure a story is told about you, your blog, or your brand. In fact, branding is often misunderstood as symbols, designs, and logos. But a brand is really the story associated with a person, product, or organization. It represents the emotional connection people associate with a name.
5. Do it all again. Making people laugh, or cry, or think just once is great, but we’re aiming for devoted readers, which can only be done when we communicate with the heart consistently and repetitively.

This is a partial list. I’ve gotten you started. Now help me out. How else do you gather a devoted community?

Every day procrastination threatens to steal my dreams and erase any hope of ever achieving my goals.

I know this, but regardless of that knowledge there are still times when I’ll sit down to work on accomplishing goals and then the next thing I know, hours have passed and so many things are still left undone. How do I still manage to let the time slip away?

When I need to write, it seems like everything else is begging for my attention. I don’t know what it is, but everything else seems so much more interesting than using my brain to write a new blog post.

Seems like that’s the only time I actually feel like emptying out my inbox after months of letting both read and unread messages accumulate to an astronomical number.  It’s terrible, I know. It makes no sense.

When mindless activities like checking my email spam folder or compulsive stat checking become more interesting than writing, I know it’s time to do something.

At this point, you’re probably thinking…”therapy” or at least some other psycho analysis to prove that I’m safe to be around children, but I assure you, it’s just the evil procrastination demon trying to steal my success.

Well, I’ve got news for him, I’m not going to surrender that easily. I refuse to let the tempting allure of the internet keep me from the most important thing I must do for my blog.  Yes, it’s time to get off of the internet, exit out of the Reader, Twitter, Facebook and yes…exit out of the internet browser entirely.

When nothing else works to curb meaningless distractions that threaten to kill my blog, I have to totally shut down Firefox, Google Chrome or whatever other browser I might be using at the moment to avoid the temptation to check my email every time I get a notification.

I have to stop myself from rushing to respond to every tweet I see. Sometimes I have to slap my own hand whenever I get the urge to start reading every new blog update that pops into my reader (they always seem urgent until you read them).

It’s strange how the very activities that help me support my blog can become the very activities that threaten its survival. Social networking is wonderful, but if  social networking and promotional activities are allowed to get out of control, they’ll devour your whole day. It’s easy lose track of time and totally forget to write something new to promote. It can become a vicious cycle.

So until I get my writing for the day done, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to shut this thing down-…! (If I could reproduce that old tube television shutdown spark, I would paste that…here!)

So what do you do to force yourself to stay productive? How do you filter out all of the distractions?

Image Credit

Every spring, my wife and I survey the junk that has been deposited around our house and we begin to collect it all. Then we sell it at a yard sale for about five percent of what we originally invested in it. The financial loss is a necessary evil that gains us the benefit of restored order and neatness.

Blogs have a tendency to collect junk too. I’m not referring to the content so much as I am all the clutter that often surrounds it. Maybe it’s time to do some spring cleaning around your own blog, just to make sure your content is nicely showcased…

The Big Question to Ask: Why Is This Blog Here Anyway?

Before deleting anything in the design of your blog, re-focus. Answer the question of why you’re blogging. What’s the essence of your content? Whom do you intend to reach? And after answering these questions, conclude with what is essential to keep?

Start Deleting Junk

Begin the process of removing anything that distracts readers, clients, or consumers from the main thrust of your blog. For example…

• Ad spaces that haven’t been purchased after six months. (Take the hint.)
• Widgets that duplicate an effect, like having 3 or 4 blogging network widgets with the same visitor faces in each.
• Share buttons that never get clicked. If nobody ever shares your stuff on Newsvine or Mixx, why do you keep the buttons around?
• Webrings and click exchanges. These have been bad mojo for a decade now.
• Out of place graphics. Be careful not to over-design your blog. Making something look cool can be a distraction.
• While you’re at it, delete drafts you’ll never finish and spam comments too.

If your blog is too far gone, it may be time for a fresh re-design, but hopefully some simple deletions will give your blog a squeaky-clean feel. Give up your compulsion to collect blog junk and focus on producing great content that compels people to discuss and share.

photo credit (and it’s not my garage)

Unless you’re blogging purely for fun, there’s likely to be some kind of financial or compensatory motivation behind the writing. And even if you are just writing for fun, you’ll probably have some interest in monitoring readership statistics as the blog grows and changes.

It’s something of a philosophical concern, but it’s worth asking: is my blog a product or a service? If it’s a limited-run sort of a thing, and you don’t intend on supporting any of the content or moderating comments, then you your blog could be considered a product. But if you intend to continue publishing into the foreseeable future, and maintain the content and the community that forms around it, then your blogging enterprise really revolves around a service.

Why does this matter? It matters because if you think of your blog as a product when it’s really a service, you may find yourself ill-equipped to deal with the ongoing costs of serving your user base.

Service-oriented blogging affects frequency

I do my best to be real. And what’s real to me is that many blogs fail because the owner/publisher in charge doesn’t fully account for the cost of maintaining the service. Here’s an illustration of what I mean:

Blogger Alex runs some self-analysis and decides that the best times to write are evenings on three weekdays, and on Sunday mornings. Alex estimates that keeping to a 4 posts-per-week schedule will be enough to keep readers interested, and drive up traffic whilst making the most of downtime when creative energy is high.

However. What Alex doesn’t realise is that although individual posts might be considered products destined for a market of attention, really what’s on offer is a comprehensive service. A service that involves thoughtful research, inspiration management, the discipline of sticking to a reliable formula, ensuring a great technical delivery, and the positive touch of a human presence.

Ultimately Alex’s initial estimate of the time involved falls short of reality because all these other items need to be taken care of. What’s likely to happen is that Alex will feel some obligation to hit the original scheduling target and start working on the blog outside the “optimum hours” originally determined by careful self-inventory of “up” times and surplus attention.

The goal is to survive

When faced with the prospect of not hitting a frequency or coverage goal, it’s important to look at the big picture. The absolute most important thing in pursuing a professional or hobbyist blogging career is persistence. I like to say “existence contains persistence”, and this is particularly true of working to maintain a viable service as writer-publisher.

In the fictitious case of Alex, the best course of action is to take stock of the situation as it is, and not as it could or should be, and realise that a 1 post-per-week goal is a better way to use one of the four overall work sessions. The other three can be shared between additional service elements like research, delivery maintenance, customer contact, and business development.

If all this sounds rather clinical, consider that the best blogs are the ones run by people who handle their responsibilities well. It’s advisable to foster one’s ability to switch modes from romantic to professional, and realise that blogging is a rewarding but also quite rigorous personal discipline.

I wish you all the very best of luck.

Interested in integrating Google Buzz into your blog? Google’s new social network does a great job of letting you encourage readers to share your blog’s content. Unfortunately, until it gets more popular Buzz might not be included in many of the social media button sets and plugins that are available for most blogging platforms. Luckily, with the right plugins, modules and extensions, you can help your readers share your posts through Buzz or even send your own Buzz updates right to your blog. Read on for some options to integrate Google Buzz into the blogging software you already use.

1. Adding a Google Buzz Button in Wordpress

One of the first things most people will want to see when using Google Buzz is an option to use buzz to easily share the content of your post. The good news is there are already a wide variety of options available for adding a Google Buzz button to Wordpress blog posts. Installation is just like any Wordpress plugin: all you need to do is upload the downloaded plugin to the wp-content/plugins folder on your server and then activate and customise it from your admin area.

2. Adding a Google Buzz Button in Blogger

If you are interested in adding a Buzz button to your Blogger posts, it will be slightly more complicated than the Wordpress option. Luckily, there’s an easy-to-understand and reasonably generic plugin that looks good available for Blogger hosted blogs. To install the plugin, you’ll need to copy a little bit of code and paste it into a specific place in your Blogger template, which means you can integrate Google Buzz in minutes!

3. Setting Up a Google Buzz Button in Joomla

One of the best things about Joomla is how easy it is to add a wide variety of extensions to customise how your Joomla site looks and functions. There’s no exception when it comes to integrating Google Buzz, with several options for integrated buttons and links that allow your readers to quickly and easily share your content with their followers in an intuitive manner.

4. Setting Up a Google Buzz Button in Drupal

The active development community around the open source Drupal content management system made it likely that a Google Buzz button would show up fast – and as predicted, it did. Drupal has a standard button integrated into the main package already, with plans to include a count feature in the near future.

5. Adding Google Buzz to Your Blog’s Sidebar

Giving your readers a way to use Google Buzz to share your content with friends is great, but it may also be useful to post your own Buzz feed on the sidebar of your blog or website to help build a sense of community and allow your readers to easily interact with you. While some of the content management systems listed in this post don’t offer this feature (at the time of writing), there are a few that are currently available for Joomla and an equivalent Wordpress plugin.

Image Credit: Unhindered by Talent

At various points of any worthwhile endeavor I’ve ever undertaken I get this nagging feeling. It’s sneaky and creeps up on me when I least expect it. It’s as if someone is whispering in my ear, probing me, asking questions, and spreading negative thoughts such as “what’s the point?” “you’re not going to make it…” “just quit…” “who really cares anyway…?”

Depending on how overwhelmed I am feeling at the moment, I may even entertain the thought for a few moments and then my stubborn resolve kicks in and talks some sense into me. Reminding me that I’ve come entirely too far to just quit, and the potential rewards are far too great to forfeit.

Have you ever felt this way about your blogging efforts? Do ever feel as if you’re running out of fuel to blog?

My advice is this, no matter what just don’t quit. Take a break and refuel if you must, but don’t give up. You never know when your day is going to come. Everyday puts you one more day closer to your goal. What if you were to quit today, and then you found out that the next day would’ve been your golden day?

What if the very next day after you closed all of your affiliate accounts was the very same day that all those visitors with those 90-day cookies returned to make purchases? What if the day after you shut down and deleted your blog was the day you discovered that several expensive requests for advertising on your site had been swirling around unread in your spam folder?

It’s these questions that give me the fuel I need to keep blogging. I can’t quit because I would always wonder what would have been if I had just kept on blogging. I’m certain that would drive me to insanity. So whenever I’m feeling a bit blogged-down (that’s way beyond being bogged-down) I find ways to refuel and re-engerize so that I can continue blogging.

Whenever you find yourself in this same rut, here’s what you can do:

• Brainstorm and research new issues brewing in your niche. Visit some forums and see what the recurring questions or problems are and consider new ways to solve them.
• Get ahead by writing at a time of day when you feel like writing and then write several posts at a time. It’s okay if they are imperfect, you can always go back and edit and add to them.
• Plan ahead. Decide on a sort of editorial plan for your week. It’s easier to write when you have a framing structure to go by. I try to divide up the various issues surrounding my niche and devote a separate day to each one so that I’m covering a variety of topics throughout the week. On most Mondays my readers can expect a link list post on WeBlogBetter and a post about marriage on Highly Favored. I wouldn’t be able to function if I didn’t know what type of post I needed to write ahead of time.
• Check your reader and review your subscriptions daily. I find that when I’m constantly reading other blogs related to my niche, it fuels my writing by providing me with a cue about what things I need to be writing about and which topics I need to stay away from. If I see too many bloggers writing on the same topics, if I can find an angle that hasn’t already been beaten to death, I avoid those topics altogether.
• Take a break. Take a day off. Take a nap. Take a load off. When I find that I’m stressed out, it really affects my ability to write effectively. I can’t concentrate and I often just end up procrastinating for hours anyway. Don’t force yourself to write, most likely what you’ll produce will be crap anyway. (or maybe that’s just me…)

Do what you need to keep going – you’ll thank yourself for it in the long run.

Buzz is a buzz word. Especially since Google adopted it. Of course, Yahoo might have adopted it first… awkward. This is not another post about Google Buzz, but the buzz about Google Buzz certainly illustrates what this article about buzz is buzzing all about…

According to Princeton’s online dictionary, “buzz” means…

• make a buzzing sound; “bees were buzzing around the hive”
• fly low; “Planes buzzed the crowds in the square”
• hum: be noisy with activity; “This office is buzzing with activity”
• sound of rapid vibration; “the buzz of a bumble bee”
• call with a buzzer; “he buzzed the servant”
• a confusion of activity and gossip; “the buzz of excitement was so great that a formal denial was issued”

It’s that last definition to which bloggers should pay special attention. Buzz can be “a confusion of activity and gossip.” For the sake of blogging’s delicate reputation, we’re going to assume that “gossip” is intended in the most positive of ways.

I recently stood in an airport check-in line for seven hours (because three inches of snow is apparently a lot in Atlanta) and I learned some things about the power of buzz that bloggers, at least those who have some message to promote, need to understand. There were over 1,000 people in line with me and it didn’t take long for opinions about the airline to spread.

Buzz Is Inevitable Among Human Beings

Our minds race too fast and our lips are far too loose for buzz not to happen. People, because they are people, are going to think. And when people think, people talk. Buzz can’t be stopped. It can rarely even be slowed down. When you write a post, you’re going to have to know in advance that buzz just happens. Complain about it or harness it – your choice.

Buzz Is Spontaneous In Nature

If you’ve ever tried to start a rumor… you should probably talk to someone… but you know how difficult it is to do. Try not to start a rumor and you’ll be far more successful. In other words, buzz can be generated, but there is no foolproof way to get it going because the same people who think and talk do so of their own prerogative.

Buzz Is Better Contained than Controlled

When I was stuck in the airport line, I genuinely felt sorry for the employees of the airline who were working so hard to manage the crowd that day. They couldn’t control what people were thinking or saying, but they did put up ropes to get us into a straight and orderly line. Bloggers have the power to do this, to some degree, with publishing and social media platforms. Do remember though, some people still get out of line and others “cut,” which usually heightens the buzz!

Buzz Can Be Very, Very Good

Yes, buzz can be very, very bad also, but smart people will squeeze all the good they can out of it. Even when buzz is negative, a pro-active response can avert disaster and perhaps win the loyalty of the formerly disgruntled. When positive, buzz is the optimum marketing tool. It was around before blogs, the internet, the television, and even those ancient things we called newspapers.

Why does all of this matter for bloggers? Because we depend on buzz. Therefore, we can instigate it, propogate it, and even capitalize upon it. It’s not easy, especially since the art of generating and guiding buzz is an ever-changing discipline. But we can at least learn from the conversations and interactions that take place around us.

What do you think? Can buzz be powerful in the hands of a skilled content producer?