A Blogging Manifesto

Cosmic Questions

What is it about blogging that turns me on, both in my own writing and in the writing of others? Why is it that certain blogs really irk me, while others strike just the right tone and cement my avid support? Why is it that some of my posts achieve broad readership and get picked up far and wide, while others, some of which I like a great deal, get read by only my most hard-core followers? And just to add a little more spice to this introspective rant, how much of my blogging is the result of pure narcissism versus my deeply-felt desire to share my domain expertise and perspective with a larger audience? These are not easy questions. And I feel almost naked asking them of myself. But I am having my own little mid-life blogging crisis and I want to use my writing as a vehicle for getting some answers. Right now.

Why I Blog

So let me start with the most basic question: why do I blog? Because my guess is that by answering this question, I will find the seeds of the answers to all the others. So the results of my Freudian "free association" exercise, following the form "I blog because...," are as follows:

1. I like to write
2. I like to be read
3. I like to read what I write because it is a window into my heart and my brain
4. I like it when people say "When I read your writing, I can hear you speaking"
5. I like the peace I feel when writing
6. I like the passion I feel when writing
7. I like to share my knowledge and experience with others
8. I like the recognition
9. I like the feedback
10. I like the connection to my audience
11. I like the challenge of writing something that people care to comment on and link to
12. I like seeing my Technorati/StatCounter/Feedburner numbers going up
13. I like to feel more hip than a normal Wall Street guy
14. I like being viewed as an expert
15. I like the new friends and colleagues I have made
16. I like the deals I've been shown, some of which I've invested in
17. I like to feel as one with the online world

Getting Introspective

I'm sure there are other reasons but I think this is a pretty good list. Looking at the 17 items it certainly answers a lot. What turns me on? See 1 through 17 above. Narcissism vs. desire to share? Some of both to be sure. And I'm ok with that. But what about those posts I write that get little pick-up, notwithstanding the fact that I think they're great? Oh, does that bug me! I can't help it. Why doesn't anyone like my stuff on creative destruction? Come on, folks. It's good stuff! At least to me. And that should be ok, right? Why does every post need to get picked up and spread all over? It shouldn't matter. As long as the writing is good, the points made relevant and that I feel good about it. I'm not sure I'm mature enough to feel that way, but I guess I'll try. Oh, and what about that practice of checking my page views multiple times a day. Who cares, right? But I'm always interested in both how many people and which people are reading my stuff. It's an addiction. Kind of like the Blackberry. And both habits are tough to shake. I'm trying to be more grown-up about this. But there is a certain excitement to being read and impacting the way people think about things. This is what really gets me off. Being an influencer. And influencer as the result of my ideas and my ability to communicate them, not my aesthetic tastes. Hmm, this explains a lot.

Getting to the Root of it All

So what really bugs me about other's blogs? Poor writing. Bad spelling. Weak analysis. "Safe," non-challenging positions. Simple aggregation without analysis. Cluttered, distracting pages. These are some of the hallmarks of sites that I find difficult to read. That said, there are exceptions to this rule. My friend Fred Wilson has a sickly-cluttered blog that takes too long to load because of its "widget farms."  But I enjoy A VC and read it every day. My other friend Howard Lindzon spells like crap and could take a course in modern English, but I enjoy his content and his firm stances on stocks, issues and people. So, as with most things in life, it is not simply black-and-white. But what Fred and Howard's blogs have in common relates to the quality of the content and the passion with which that content is delivered. I am apparently willing to look beyond cosmetic annoyances to get to the meat of the issue. This is good insight. Nice to know I'm not totally superficial, eh?

A Blogging Manifesto

In light of these conclusions, I'd like to put forth my own Blogging Manifesto. This may not work for you, but it does for me.

#1: Write with passion

#2: Write well

#3: Take a position - always

#4: Think about what your audience would like to read, but don't be limited by it

#5: Don't be obsessed with your readership; if your blog is good, they will come

#6: Leverage your experiences and domain expertise in your writing

#7: Be able to back up opinion with fact and cogent arguments

#8: Excellent content can make up for a lot of cosmetic annoyances

#9: Blog to live, don't live to blog

#10: Have thick skin; if you're not pissing anyone off and being criticized, you're probably not writing with enough conviction

So that's it. Take it for what it's worth. I hope you enjoyed the post, because I enjoyed the process of writing it.