This is a bit of a rant. A long confession. A truly personal slice of deep dish me.
Can we talk about our relationship for a minute? It’s not you; it’s me. I’m absolutely smothering under a role here — and fronting is so not my style.
Maintaining multiple professional brands is draining me. The transition has been unfolding over the past two years, and I’ve reached another “molting” stage. I’m running out of room in this current shell.
A brief history of where I’m coming from:
From 2003 to 2006, I maintained a general web design, publishing, and consulting brand called PageCoach. I did everything that I do now — for everybody else — coding, copywriting, coaching. I specialized in transitioning Email Newsletter Publishers to MovableType powered blogs.
In 2006, I defected to WordPress with, what I thought at the time, was a purely personal project — Shift Your Spirits. It was life-changing — the degree of success that came from putting my skills, my work, and my energy into something I was truly passionate about… There was no comparison. You hear it all the time “blog about something you LOVE…”
PageCoach was a virtual glass office building, and Shift Your Spirits began as a little shed out back. In nine months, that shed grew to be a cathedral and absolutely dwarfed my day job. My blog development clients began to stream in from my church crowd — so many of you were spiritual entrepreneurs and bloggers too — even my marketing clients shifted to reflect my spiritual venture, my personal and professional evolution.
So, about a year ago, I packed up my web design business and moved it into a little office in the basement of my virtual church. I proudly and painfully ditched my years of pagerank in favor of a more authentic domain — SladeRoberson.com. (The one thing I plan on doing as long as I’m on this earth is being Slade Roberson.) I took all my general business problogging advice, packaged it in tutorial format, and put it on a shelf, where I could still pull it down and offer it to anyone who asked.
Remember the cool professor you had in college who you could go out for a beer with after the lecture? That’s what I hoped to create a space for. My intentions with sladeroberson.com/blogging was to provide a place for me to blog about the blogging, write about the writing, and commune with a select few of my Shift Your Spirits audience who wanted to meet me after class.
The reason why I’m smothering is that I go to the podium in my cathedral on Sundays to preach about spirit — it’s the greatest job I’ve ever had in my life. The problem is, I’m not meeting my peer bloggers in my office for private fire-side chats and behind-the-screens dish — I’m still just trading hats and podiums and lecture halls.
I wear my minister’s collar and my big grand papal robes, but instead of loosening them and letting down my hair, I’m hurrying, sometimes breathlessly, to change into my Creative Blogging Teacher’s corduroy jacket and meet some of you in another huge room.
It’s another podium. It’s another uniform. I’m working two “jobs” and it’s not working for me anymore. The bulk of my income now comes from working full-time as a professional intuitive — and I love it. Marketing consultant is no longer my safety net/paycheck — it’s a second job that doesn’t even pay as well. It’s burdening me.
Here’s what I need to happen:
Several years ago, I began working with a literary agent/editor who was the first person to show me that my authentic voice is in my correspondence. When he was working on the author bio/background information that he presented to publishers as part of my press kit, he said to me “The back story on how you wrote this series of novels is better than the novels.” Ouch.
But, God, was he right! It’s no wonder that my entire career now revolves around one-on-one readings and phone consultations.
Recent private conversations with my blogging peers that I thought would be the source for blog posts here haven’t materialized. Here are some examples of questions just in the last week that produced intensely rich dialogs that are still absent from this blog:
- How do I deal with blogging about issues that family and friends might find uncomfortable? What do you do about your parents reading your blog?
- How do you move past the fear of asking for what you deserve in terms of fees for professional services? (I was the student on this one… I don’t want to be the teacher here all the time.)
- Why your inexpensive passive digital products are not likely to bring you a full-time income.
- If you’re truly called to do the kind of work I do, you can learn how to be a professional intuitive.
- Do I have spirit guides who specifically help me write? (No, actually I have spirit guide editors… What a fun question!)
Why aren’t these my blogging about bogging posts? Because instead of letting this be the place you meet me outside of Shift Your Spirits to talk shop, dish dirt, and simply hear what works for me and what doesn’t, I’m still trying to be too many things to too many people.
I love to share my “professional tricks of the trade” — but my intentions are not to have a web design business anymore. I’m not becoming a blogging consultant — I’ve been a blogging consultant. I’m a minister, an intuitive consultant, a spiritual coach and a writer.
Why do you read this blog?
- You’re simply a fan of Shift Your Spirits and you want more of me — thank you from the bottom of my heart!
- You read Shift Your Spirits and you say “Wow — I want to do what he’s doing!”
- You say “I’m a personal development blogger and I’d love to pick Slade’s brain…”
You see yourself in me, and I see myself in you. It’s as simple as that. But in this current format, it’s not happening for me.
I don’t care about offering you “20 Hot Tips to Get Your Blog Posts Dugg to High Heaven.”
You have a million places you can go to read that [repetitive crap]. The real me would much rather say “Dude, all that time you’re wasting with your head up the ass of some social media scheme is NOT creating content. It’s not making you a better writer. It’s not doing nearly as much for your business as you hope it will. Is your life purpose defined by having the most friends on Facebook? Is your personal mission about becoming you, or are you becoming Steve Pavlina? (Steve’s got it covered…)”
See, I need to be a little crass sometimes.
I wear the serious/caring/positive/good-vibes hat on Shift Your Spirits. That voice is real, it is authentic — but I’ve got a few more facets of my persona that are breathing through a pillow. I need to turn off the microphone, step away from the podium, and be your friend who is a full-time, successful, spiritual entrepreneur who can tell it to you like it is.
Not like it is for everyone — anyone — like it is for me.
I want to leave a record, a trail, a map of how I got where I’m going. For those who want to go somewhere similar. Because that’s the only place I can take you to with any kind of authenticity or confidence.
So what happens now?
Well, for starters, my general problogging tutorials may be going away. Let’s say they are Limited Edition, so grab a copy now. I’m going to repackage my recipe with every single tip, trick, and tool that I know — for someone whose goals are identical to mine. I’m going to blueprint my entire business for coaches and intuitive professionals who want to build an entirely blog-based marketing machine to support service-based business models. But all that belongs in a product — this is my blog about blogging. I’m not running anymore freaking infomercials in my private kick back space.
Remember your forts and tree houses? I need a club house. I think I’m going to stick my virtual club house right here. You are invited. It’s going to be an infomercial free zone.
I despise generated adspace and high-traffic blogging schemes. From my perspective, which is all that I can really share — THAT blogging concept is an up-hill battle; it most likely will NOT provide you the income to quit your day job; it is NOT the way to create value for your readers. (If you want the real truth, if I have to navigate a big Google Adblock pylon to get from your Post Title through that first poor little squeezed-to-death paragraph — your content is unlikely to engage me. I’m a reader too, you know and I represent a lot of your potential visitors.)
Look, I guess, the bottom line here for me is that I’m not ever going to be a guest on Oprah because I teach people how to blog better. That’s not even remotely a goal of mine. Now, I’d love to show up on Miss Winfrey’s coach for any number of other reasons — most of them already in evidence, over here.
So, I’m breaking up with you?! Not at all. I actually intend to open up and show you even more of me. I don’t have the energy anymore to be anything more or less.
Posting this feels even better than the merciless feed reader purging party I threw for myself on Wednesday…
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
Slade, Slade, Slade!!!
Oh Thank God! was all I could be heard saying!
I am more than certain I could never have expressed what you did in this aricle quite so eloquently, I am definitely more the complainer type. But there was resonance. I have skills. I have used those skills. I have used some of them to absolute death. Please don’t make me do it again, I whine.
I hear people say to me now as I look for a job, “well, you just have to find a place where those skills translate well”. Can you hear me screaming yet? That is not really want I want to do. I do not want to repackage so I can sell something that has outlived it’s usefulness for me. It is just not true. Not a truth or a true me, so it can’t possibly be of benefit to anyone else.
There is a distinct difference between us. I do not have the ideal job that I love and adore as you do. In fact, I have no real clue what that looks like. Or if any of those aforementioned skills will serve me once I can find that ideal, or in lieu of ideal, something different. I struggle now with prayer. Hopefully that won’t last too much longer, so I can get back to it, ask to be shown that different thing.
Last two things.
Finally, after procrastinating since last August, used your I’m taking it away incentive to purchase a tutorial. As Andrea recently said, maybe I needed to be pushed since I wouldn’t jump.
And good for you. Really. It is so very inspiring to see someone stand on such solid ground.
Awesome. Do we get to have secret handshakes and Official Clubhouse Mottoes???
I love reading a blog post (like this one) that is full of self-empowering change and authenticity. It has real meaning. Thanks for sharing!
Slade,
I notice a lot of people are getting more focused – following their passions… Staying on path. I can’t wait to hear about your next steps.
I do hate to echo Barbara, but…. if something has to echo, well…. “Thank God!”
I’ve missed you, Slade! I barely know you, but I missed you. Welcome back.
What drew me here, initially, was my own early struggle to balance my personal motivations with the whole blogging bru-haha. The first posts I remember reading here somehow spoke to me on that topic, the importance of staying on course and not succumbing to the blog-world peer pressures. It’s interesting (and oddly reassuring) that you get off course, too.
Can I donate some lumber for that tree house?
Barbara,
Reading your comment I realized how ungrateful I may sound, in the context of having a job I really love. Let me tell you this: I KNOW what it feels like to have all those jobs that weren’t quite right. I KNOW a million times over. So, in case it’s not clear where I’ve come from, let me just say that I didn’t wake up one day with an epiphany to start a blog about clairaudience, spirit guides, and I didn’t say “I’m going to be a professional intuitive!”
Part of what allowed that to unfold was a certain kind of giving up and creating something motivated by everything BUT a j-o-b.
SYS was not the first web site I launched. There are so many things I’ve written, attempted to publish, at very stages of publication… It’s actually pretty maddening. Another thing I think it’s important for me to point out — I started working for myself (for other people still) as a web designer because I was laid off from two jobs in a row. Simultaneously, I had a book deal with a mainstream publishing house that ended up being a contract packed with slavery and indentured servitude.
I was PISSED. Most writers know the Day Job on one hand, the Writing on the Side — the day job yanked the rug out from under me, and the dream was offered by the devil and I just LOST it. I felt I had run out of options and that I was not in control. Please know that even then a light bulb did not go off and celestial choirs did not sing and everything started falling into place.
It got even harder. And then harder. As you can tell from this post, it’s on-going — even after I blundered into the perfect place for me TO struggle, the learning experiences and the level of entrepreneurial challenges are still high.
Jeff,
You bet, man! What’s your clubhouse motto?
Kaspian,
Really?! Wow, thank you. I needed to hear that.
Tori,
That’s the sweetest thing to say! I think I missed me, too. I think I felt like I had to “Practice what I preach,” I do practice what I preach as a marketer, on Shift Your Spirits, but I don’t want to preach here, too. I need a place where I can really just talk. Maybe that was what you responded to, initially.
The TreeHouse Metaphor:
The lumber is brung!
When you leave a comment here, you are essentially adding another plank, nailing another nail.
Guys,
I can’t tell you how much my ideas just opened up and began to flood. It’s like there was a kink in the garden hose… I have so many things I want to talk about here:
*It’s so difficult maintaining a straight face, a dignity, a political correctness when writing about spirituality and religion. Priests are, on a personal level (myself included) walking hypocrites by default. I believe you can represent that Authority and do it very well, but that doesn’t make you AN authority. You can’t channel that 24-7.
*Personal Development bloggers are wearing me out — Yes, some people might lump me in that category — that doesn’t mean I can’t observe it. Does it feel to anyone else like there’s an army of Mutant Goody-Goody Stepford Kids invading the blogosphere? I mean, 19 year olds instructing me on goal setting and time management? REALLY?! Out of the mouths of babes and all that — there are a couple that are incredibly wise for their years — but they are exceptions.
*There’s not a lot of room for a sense of humor in the pulpit. One thing that strikes me when I talk on the phone to Andrea or to Jeff is how much FUN we have.
*I do actually love to do consulting. I will continue to do so, from a new perspective — I just don’t want to do it in the posts here. When someone is paying me to give their blog my undivided attention, I will. It’s much more appropriate to address those goals and recommendations on a case-by-case basis — watering that information down too much and posting it in such a way that it can benefit 703 people… Ugh. I just can’t do that anymore.
As I said about my tutorials, I’m going to create a home for those for anyone who wants them.
On Shift Your Spirits, I will continue to play the hard-core niche marketer — I will keep playing to keywords and working for subscribers and posting to a critical editorial schedule. Here, I’m not doing ANY of that anymore.
See, I’m already blabbing away… Why? Because I’m just writing what I think. I’ve never, ever experienced writer’s block in a comment or an email — have you?
That tells me something…
Before I forget, I have to share a nugget of SEO Madness that I find too amusing:
I just got a flurry of Search Engine Traffic to this post for “Tips to Get Your Blog Posts Dugg”.
Thanks to my keyword rich (sarcastic) sentence:
What does that tell you? (Other than that I just really disappointed a handful of hopeful clickers?)
Slade, you’ve really got something here, something that just hit me. Why do people subscribe to blogs? Not to be fed information, though that’s always great… But to hear an authentic voice that they love to hear. Slade, I’d subscribe to your blog if you decided to start writing about underwater flower arranging. It’s your voice I love to hear — your authentic voice — even more than I love your content.
Slade,
FYI. Never got the impression you were ungrateful. Just trying to reconcile the idea I might have to live to be 99 so that once I get that ideal job I’d have a few years to enjoy it. So if there is anyone ungrateful, let me take that seat today! I swear if I have to learn one more numerical type system just to do a job, I may spontaneously combust. Does anyone even hear me when I tell them I hate accounting? Just because I can take garbage out to the trash can does not indicate ambition to do it for a living.
Just one more so you know fact, it has been crystal clear since that first day last July, the first day I happened upon your blog, there was nothing if not the presence of blood, sweat and tears in the backdrop. Always. They were catalysts and are still evident today in their various forms. I just like the Oh Thank God ones better.
Welcome back Slade! I thought your evil twin had taken over for good…
That SEO tidbit is too funny. Synchronicifying, really. I’ll bet you’ll get some e-mails later in the day from people who were looking for digg heaven but ended up finding something totally different (my story of finding this site is not too different, actually)
Jeff,
Thank you for telling me that — the warm fuzzy part rocks and means a lot to me, without a doubt — but it helps to know specifically what you respond to and why. A great example of a question everyone should ask…
Knowing that you prioritize the source over the content is eye-opening — it puts a lot into perspective for me.
Now, about the Underwater Flower Arranging:
I got a flash — picture it — a really high end restaurant, specializing in Asian cuisine, sushi, with enormous, bubbly water tanks as the partitions and walls between tables, with ichibana (isn’t that Japanese flower arranging).
Fabulous! Restauranteurs and Interior Designs feel free to run with the concept…
Barbara,
I will consider myself a true Adult when I can finally afford to hire an accountant. I am crossing you off the list of candidates for that job!
Vitor,
You know, it’s kind of amazing, but it is not lost on me that someone could discover the wrong web page for the right reason. It has happened before. Seriously cool to know that the energy is taken care of at a level you don’t really have to “control.”
Good stuff Slade, I like the idea of a “Work” site and a “Play” site. I only have the one (Work) for now, although I would love to rant and rave about politics. I used to be a news junkie, but I cut that out of my attention in-box with the rest of TV (except for Monday eves).
I am going to grab those tutorials, and I have a proposition for you…send me an e-mail at stephen [at] hdbizblog [dot] com. In fact, any of the rest of you who want to find out about my own Big Secret Project, send me one too. Put “Secret Project” in the subject line. This could be a doozy! You guys are pretty smart…
Stephen,
Thanks, man!
I can’t help but identify with your political/news junkie side. I do NOT think that Spirituality should be mixed with Religion, let alone Politics. (Here’s another perfect example of how I muzzle myself too much.)
I do absolutely believe that you should target your blogs toward specific niches/topics and if you want to go off-topic, start another blog. Keep them separate.
That’s certainly a big motivation for my creating a personal brand, with multiple blogs.
Slade, after reading all of these great comments, I may have trouble finding anything different to say. I look forward to our continued journey together. I am like Jeff. At this point, I would follow you anywhere with a blog. Your writing has always been authentic. That is the most important thing to me. I have left two wonderful teachers behind in the past 20 years because they both stopped being authentic. I just realized that was my reason. A lot of people that don’t really take the time to know me assume that I follow others blindly. That has never been true. I have always followed as long as those others were going my way. How do I know what the right way is. I listen to that inner voice that knows and sees the bigger picture. I think that is also what you do. You follow your own inner voice. We sometimes get sidetracked for awhile but that is ok. It is part of the journey. We are all learning to be true to ourselves—not our ego self, but our Higher Self.
Spirituality can sometimes hold hands with Religion for some people. I think we as a group have mostly gone beyond that stage or level and have left Religion behind. Religion met my needs for awhile. Today, my Spirituality has grown way beyond the bounds and limits of man-made Religion. Glad you are back, my friend.
Slade – Wow! You blasted out that one. It’s good. In reading both blogs(Spiritual Blogger and Shift Your Spirits) I’ve felt in both cases you have been real and authentic only wearing different hats. I’ve learned alot from both. Being new to blogging, I’ll miss your expertise in Spiritual Blogger. You tell it like you see it.
Now that you’re setting the one hat aside and concentrating on your virtual club house hat, I can’t wait to see all that insight, intuition and magic come together as one – POW!
I love it and I’m looking forward to the final Shift. Maybe we’ll meet in that virtual club house coffee room and have a chat – or you can stop by and have a cup of tea at my kitchen table.
Best of Luck in all you do. As Henry David Thoreau said, “…if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
——-That’s what you’re doing——–
I loved it when you said you weren’t going to be bothered with listing 20 ways to get Dugg to High Heaven. Personally, I’m stick and tired of bulleted points, listing ways of getting something.
I’m more interested in reading stories, getting to know the person and finding out in a story format how things were done (whatever they might be) instead of reading a bland bulleted list that could be copied from anywhere. I don’t know why some of those sites that run a daily list of “how to’s” manage to attract so many readers but I am not one of them. I want something more authentic, more real.
And you’re one of them. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.
[...] guy who can speak from his heart. (Who doesn’t?) Slade from Spiritual Blogging opens up about speaking with his authentic voice – how he hasn’t been writing from his heart and now how he will….. I’ve been [...]
Patricia,
You certainly found something to say that no one else has said. You are actually VERY good at that.
I’d say that’s a pretty major revelation!
Pat R,
Thanks for the encouragement!
Let me just clarify that I don’t have any plans to stop sharing my expertise about blogging, here — it’s actually the opposite. I think if you look at some of my comments (say, the Subscriber List building comments I made on the Stumbling Experiment post, for example) you’ll see a much more authentic representation of what I have to share or want to say.
Those comments are still full of tips, I hope, but they’re much less self-conscious or formal. They come quickly, they’re unedited, un-worked. There’s an effortlessness… You know what I mean?
Anyway, I hope to allow more of that to come through.
I am a writer and a blogger — I love the technology, the process. I love talking about it. So I just need to shut up and talk about it. (?)
Slade, I agree with Jeff. The first time I read your articles, they’ve enchanted me. It’s as if a personal friend is talking directly to you, in a very personal dialogue. But that’s not sole reason that makes you so unique (I love some of your revolutionary ideas too!). But it’s definitely the MAIN reason.
Whatever your future endeavours may be, you’ve my utmost support!
Thanks for everything,
Ellesse
Stephen,
Thank you! Coming from you, it means a lot. After watching your videos last week I was blown away by your re-setting the standard for transparency, authenticity, and vulnerability.
The bullet points of “How to Get Stuff” — yes, I’m with you, man; it’s KILLING me. Actually, those kinds of blogs and posts simply kill my interest, before I ever even read them.
I know that a lot of work still goes into generating that kind of material, and I’m not knocking anyone who benefits from reading it. But I get a sense that the authors are desperately trying to apply a formula that’s not performing nearly as well as they think it is.
They keep pushing forward into more of the same, and I’m just here to say that that’s exactly what DOES NOT work for me. Even this post and the comments you guys have shared here confirm that.
There are a lot of virtual environmental truths, there are marketing principles that are nearly universal, but they really, really must be applied in combination with originality or creativity or out-of-the-box remarkable-ness.
Otherwise, they’re Stepford Blogs — they’re glossy mannequin android robot blogs with an inhuman smile plastered across their faces bleeting canned affirmations…
Oh, I’ll shut up for now… But these are definitely the kinds of things I’d like to address more (and more honestly).
Ellesse,
Cool! That’s exactly what I feel the need to do more of. I feel that my consulting clients and my one-on-one critiques effortlessly display that sense to a degree that the posts sometimes can’t. They’re full of meat and specifics, and the filter is 100% You and Your Goals — somehow, that allows me to be more myself.
I guess what happens is that I take some of those same topics, remove all the client specifics, and what I’m left with is a kind of watered-down perspective.
I am definitely seeking a way to balance the elements of who I am, what I’m about, and what I do so that it benefits you.
And you know I embrace the Destructive aspect of Creating — sometimes I just need to break all the legos back down into pieces and put them back together again. It seems my pattern is a kind of Seasonal Meltdown
Slade, looking over all these comments… Have you considered adding a Forum here? That kind of format — where folks could post a question, and get personal, specific responses from Your Authentic Voice, as well as all the other vibrant voices of this community you’ve gathered — would seem ideal. (I have no idea what kind of work that would entail on your end, setting that up… ??)
Jeff,
It’s a great suggestion which I’ll consider for the future. I am mulling over making my Problogging for Spiritual Entrepreneurs program into an online learning environment, more of a mastermind-style gated community.
A lot will depend on how large the audience is. (99% of the forums I’ve personally been involved in setting up have been “premature” — in anticipation of a large audience that doesn’t necessarily materialize…) Setting it up would not be the issue for me — it’s all a question of Does the Audience Need One?
The subscriber list for this blog is small (a little over 700 total, with the “active” participants, in terms of comments, being much less than 100).
Another big issue for me is “working for free” — it is a lot of work to focus my attention on blog consulting or marketing strategies. I hope it doesn’t come across as selfish to say this, but I can’t afford to do that kind of work on a large scale, and certainly not outside a professional framework.
It works best when it’s tailored to the client and when we can mutually agree to invest with real focus. I can only ideally choose to work with one other author | publisher in any given month. I guess what I’m trying to say is I need my consulting gigs to be very few and far between, and when I do take them on, commit 100%.
I don’t know about you, but I’m generally turned off by forum environments and never seem to stick around with the ones I join. It would SUCK to feel obligated to a forum with a small active membership with no compensation.
I’d be curious to know how you REALLY feel about forums — I’ve watched a lot of people launch forums that die in the water at a faster rate than blogs; the ones that I belong to which are “successful” — I still don’t feel the need to visit.
Who belongs to a forum they really feel is a huge benefit? I’m truly asking here, I’m curious.
Honestly, I do not belong to any forums that bring me a huge benefit. I visit Steve Pavlina’s fairly frequently, and participate occasionally, but I spend no more than five minutes a day there. My gut says that a forum here would be hugely more beneficial to me — I would love to have a community where I could ask the questions that I occasionally run up against, and help other people who are struggling with things I’ve already conquered. But I definitely see where you’re coming from here, Slade.
Jeff,
I haven’t forgotten that the Pavlina forums grew (in part) from the comments on Erin’s blog — which is where we met. That’s a pretty incredibly huge benefit, in my book!
Regarding Forums: Years ago I loved the way forum conversations flowed, but blogging and social sites have replaced many of their functions. Between that, spam, and poor moderating skills, the quality of forum participation (and participants) has really suffered. The only ones I keep up at all are are directly related to particular products, kept alive only by new consumers asking questions, and even then they tend to be very slow.
Still, I’ve often thought how much I’d like to be part of a community of spiritual/personal development bloggers. I considered starting a forum on the topic, but decided it would take a great deal of careful moderation to keep the focus on spiritual-niche blogging, rather than veering off into spiritual/religious debates and points of view. Way too much time for no real return.
Maybe a social network community would be a better option? It would be great to have a sort of central place to ask spiritual-niche questions and share info, while each of us were still in control of our own space. I’m not a big social media person, so I’m not sure how to set up that sort of central, neutral space, but it’d be interesting…. Or I could just get more active here, and ask questions in the comments area like a good blog neighbor
Tori,
Your comment is very rich — I’m grateful that it’s here, and not off in a forum somewhere!
Forums for products:
I didn’t actually realize this until you said it — the only forums I dip into with any regularity are the WordPress Support forums and the Feedburner forums. Totally technical, problem/solution specific. Ideal troubleshooting environments.
Topical / Discussion Forums & Social Media:
What about the blogosphere, you know? I do the commenting, the chatting, the networking, the exchange of ideas every day, constantly — in a distributed environment — blogs.
Aren’t we already doing what we’re describing? I feel this is one of the reasons why the topical, organic sharing of ideas has shifted away from forums (and social media, as you said).
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve chosen (in the moment, due to time or energy or attention) to comment on a post OR Stumble/Review a post. I don’t always get around to doing both, because to some degree these are redundant actions and responses.
Part of me still argues for blowing off ALL social media and just freaking posting on my own blog, and posting more meaningful comments on the blogs of others.
Yes, I’ve had a trickle of traffic from my forum profiles — but you have to be really dedicated, really active, and really visible in the forum all the time. Um… that feels like “web presence infidelity” to me. It’s like taking somebody else’s kids to the zoo and leaving mine at home.
Yes, Stumble has helped me meet new peers, more than anything, and the raw traffic spikes are fun to see, but I must tell you — the best, high quality, most likely to not only visit but stick around visitors for me come from blogging and commenting.
The search engine rankings, the word of mouth, the promotion — the bulk of it really does seem to take care of itself.
Authority Blogger Forum
For the record, if you guys want a Problogging community, I do recommend this forum as one of the last I joined. I identify what I do — using a blog to promote professional services — as Chris G. defines “authority” blogging.
But I gotta be honest with you — I absolutely agree with Chris’s approach, but then I do know enough about how this business model works that my To Do list is usually Get To It, Do More of It, Keep Doing It…
Slade:
And I’m honored that you are honored by my comments sir. I was just talking about you the other day with Deb Estep, a fellow blogger from the area. She was telling me that her daughter did a reading with you, piquing my interest in doing one with you sometime in the future. I’d be very, very interested. In fact, if you wouldn’t mind, please contact me at stephen(at)sjhopson(dot)com and give me your reading rates and tell me how you do it. Remember that I’m deaf and using the telephone, while “do-able” is a bit of a chore since we’d have to go through an operator who has to type to me what you’re saying.
In any case, while I eagerly wait to hear about your rates, I thought I would point you to a story that I guest posted at Pick the Brain. It came out last night. Feel free to look for a post called “3 Words That Forever Changed a Deaf Boy’s Life.” If you haven’t read it, you might be inspired. At least I hope so! Apparently Pick the Brain editors are sick of listing tips too. They have signaled a willingness to change their format to include more stories.
Hooray!
P.S. Congrats on the gigantic list of comments here – you certainly seem to have generated much enthuaism from your community. COOL!
Slade, you’re right.. we ARE doing what we were describing wanting in a forum.
It’s rare for me to engage in a comment discussion like this.. I get an odd sort of comment anxiety, and feel like I’m trodding into a strangers home, each time. I ‘spose I just need to get over that, because this has been enjoyable : )
A-frickin-men, brother! Hallelujah.
Now I know why you were so enthusiastic about me dropping Monk at Work and starting Viverati — you’re going through the same thing!
Welcome to the free world, bro… breathe it in deep. Congratulations.
Congratulations, Slade!
I’ve barely been in the business, blogging for only a couple of months and I’m already feeling like I’m stifling myself. I’m not a very productive person, nor do I find it easy to keep a straight face when proletyzing. In real life I am known for a humourous attitude to wisdom and can be sarcastic about the mainstream.
So thanks for the reminder. I’ll try nipping my sweetness in the bud.
Louise
Louise,
I feel that a sense of humor (especially a slightly wicked or snarky one) may be one of the hardest aspects to project in text, where tone of voice and body language isn’t a factor…
This is compounded when your subject matter, your agenda, or your mission tends to be a more serious or “profound” nature… I wish I knew the perfect delicate recipe. I truly admire spoken word and stand-up artists, who can communicate that full range…
I see that your blog title “Island Wench” presents a bit of bad ass cheekiness right up front — I like that!
(I am a little late reading your post)
I love life… we are always evolving ..changing, becoming better. Thank you for reminding us to live our purpose, full of passion, determination and joy.
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