How Does The Public Perceive You?
Do you understand what your audience expects from you? It is very common and easy to lose touch with the expectations of your readers and manifest your own realities of what you think your readers want delivered. Additionally, you may start a blog with one intention but soon discover that your readers send you indirect messages and signals to shift onto a topic of a different interest. While you have your own personal reasons for creating your blog, the ball is not in your court. Control is in the power of your readers.
Most blogs of a professional stature percolate expertise, leadership and knowledge that gets passed down and absorbed into their flock. It doesn’t matter what the niche, topic or material subject matter is, there is a clear expert, that person is the coach and a leader… that individual is the person that people look up to.
To me, leadership is training individuals for my future replacement. I believe that I can not advance in life unless I have coached and developed someone to take my place. I can not move on from my current position and leave a void. I am not a selfish man, but rather, I am a giving man. I am who I am, because I want to grow. I can not grow unless I also incubate a replacement. And that is why I teach and provide the level of information I do.
I don’t like the direction leaders take within the MMO niche.
I have said time and time again, there are followers who depend on the quality and leadership from many of the claimed experts within this niche. I don’t like the direction many of these leaders take within my niche group because they either fail, mislead, fluff information, brainwash and or just avoid speaking about the things that readers want to hear.
And aside from that, many of these claimed or perceived leaders resort to publishing content that is of lesser quality than would be expected from their readers.
In a specific situation that I witnessed today I want to share with you my thoughts and what I have learned from it. I am sorry folks, I can not give out names or point fingers; however, if you run Google Alerts on my name, many of you will pin point the situation I witnessed today that put the spark into this post. Keep it to yourself as I would like to maintain a level or professionalism and respect to another fellow leader within my niche.
Having that said, I want to talk about the importance of being professional within a blog that you have shaped and molded into being a professional blog.
Rant blogs are not professional blogs, nor should professional blogs be used for publishing rants. By using a professional blog as a medium for publishing rants, I believe that it rebates the level of merit earned from the trusted and pioneer blogger.
Each niche has its own levels of individual reader tolerances; however, I must say that the MMO niche is one of very low tolerance. Who is showing you how to make money online? Who meets or exceed your levels of expectation?
Regardless of what you do in your blog world, I know that many of us have our own niche blogs that we run, it is important that you stay focused on what your readers need and worry less about complaining about your life situations, misfortunes and overall bad luck of the draw.
Some readers may be sympathetic to your situation; however, majority of the readers will feel, “how does this help me with what I am trying to learn?” There is nothing wrong with rant blogs; however, there is a right place as well as a wrong place to publish rants.
If you are a professional blogger or one who is perceived to be, publishing rants and illustrating negative emotions regarding personal events or situations can harm your reputation and lead your flock astray.
And in doing so, you regress in your own development towards taking the next advancement because unfortunately, before you can grow to the next level, you have to have a replacement fully trained and ready to fill your void.
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10 comments
Mark is not a leader I would follow. He is terribly annoying and says some really silly things. I think it is all done as link bait.
I love reading all of Wendy’s post, even if I dont comment much. She’s always very informative, as is Essential Keystrokes and Liz Strauss. Each of these are all my female role models in the MMO field, whether they admit that’s what they are or not. I do agree though, you can start a blog with the intention of doing something and end up having to rethink it because you can tell the direction your readers would like to see it go. That or you can see by changing it up a bit you’ll get the readers you want. As far as personal issues on blogs, I think it depends on the circumstances. I mean if someone just got into an accident or lost a family member I would hope they’d want to tell their readers.
Who is the Mark you are talking about?
It’s usually easy to spot those who lead by feeding their own mislead understandings (and ego) compared to those who search out the best answers to problems.
I will stick with those like you Garry, who actually look for ways to help others.
@ HM3,
Wendy is great! I love reading her site. She has done a lot with it in 2007.
@ DayJob and HM3,
BTW, go to http://www.gravatar.com and get yourself a nice new shiny avatar.
@ David,
Thanks bud… I think you’re paddling in that same “help boat” as me.
Gary,
Just wanted to show some support here for you.
I have been reading several blogs since a couple of months back and not once did I see any owner saying they will delete “don’t have something constructive” comment….
I would think better off disable comments so that no one can comment….
Btw, you have a great blog.
Hey Bryan
Welcome to my blog. Thanks for dropping me a comment. Yes, indeed… the same person we are speaking of also has banned my IP from visiting his site. LOL!! Needless to say, that is stupid for the fact that I am multiple IP’s and I can dump any IP back into an IP pool and get a new one reassigned.
So whatever… it is claimed that the site is a community driven by people who make money online; however, when someone disagrees with the views of the owners, or tries to offer some advice, I gets shunned, called names and then banned. LOL.
I am so sick of the make money online niche. This niche honestly makes me want to puke. It is a dirty rotten, cheap, crooked, sneaky niche that thrives off taking advantage of the ignorant and many of this “ignorant” are just people who want to learn how to make money.
It’s a vicious cycle and one day I want to have enough authority and reputation to put a stop to it. Honestly, it is really a matter of time before I blow up and use this blog to call out all the idiots who lie, cheat and take advantage of their readers and treat them like cattle.
Garry,
You are damn right about the whole MMO thing…. I think so far I read, there is not much value added to my MMO knowledge except recently when I come across you, Vic and a few others.
Thought of leaving a comment at that person blog, but, as I don’t have a blog, I am afraid that I will be accused of being ANONYMOUS LOL!!!!
I simply cannot tolerate people who pay peanut and thought that they are BIG customer, I means, if apology and compensation is not enough, what else you want….
Anyway, sorry for so much ranting from me, but, that’s what comment for, isn’t it
Hi Garry, I read that incident and the comments and am shocked by your comment here that you were ‘banned’. When someone disagrees with you, it is of course natural to feel upset, I am sure most of us, if not all, have felt that before. But it is never productive nor good for your own development and learning if you fight back in such a manner. Unfortunately in the world of business and wannabe ‘entrepreneurs’, this is extremely common. I’ve always said and constantly try to apply to my life, that we should attempt to turn negatives into positives, and fighting fire with fire will never get you anywhere.
Keep up the good stuff Garry – always learn something when I drop by, which is not as often as I want nowadays but I still do.
have a great day!
Being upset is one thing… calling a commentator annoying is another… banning an IP address in a weak ass attempt to prevent me from accessing his site is stupid. He is such a poser. He asked for advice, I gave it to him… even defended him after the fact when he started to lose readers and got called names by him and was asked to leave and never to come back. So whatever… the dude is an idiot. But you’d only catch me saying that half asleep and needing more.
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