Eighty percent of being a blogger is showing up

I've been ruminating lately about bloggers (and some publishers) who don't understand the first thing about how and why readers read opinions.

We do not, primarily, read opinions, be they by bloggers or columnists, for some flash of insight we hope to get. We read them to get to know them. Once we get to know them, they can help us find our bearings. They're a fixed point, a reliable true north that helps us sort things out when the flotsam and jetsam hits the fan.

This morning I got an e-mail of disappointment from a regular reader (okay, it was my co-blogger, Kristen Ridley) who said she "zipped over to your blog this morning hoping you would have posted some comment on the speech." Well, the Obama speech just didn't inspire me to make a comment. I think I have an antipathy to these state-of-the-union-monsters in general. I couldn't stand to listen to them from Clinton or Bush, either. Without the benefit of my sage take, Ridley used Facebook to post her own smart note on the speech, which I told her "was what I wouldda said if I coulda laid tongue to it."

But the point is, I usually weigh in on major communication events, and my readers can usually rely on me to do so. So much so that I suppose I make some kind of statement when I don't post on a given matter.

All of this is my reply to the otherwise super-smart communication consultant who sent a note to all his contacts proudly announcing the second or third or fourth relaunch of his blog.

"Greetings from the Heart, Soul and Capital of Europe," he began cheerfully, breaking six months of silence. "After a long break spent working, relaxing and taking in what life in Europe's Capital has to offer ... along comes another edition of [my blog] ... Wishing you the best--and looking forward to your thoughts and comments."

Hey everybody, guess who's back? I am!!!

Opinions are like assholes: Everybody has one.

But reliable sparkers of ongoing conversations among a community organized around a common interest—well, this is why newspaper columnists write more than once a week, and why bloggers pay a heavy price for taking six months off.

Comments

[Kasia]

I'm just curious what "Europe's Capital" is.

[David Murray]

Anywhere this guy happens to be living, I'd say.

Oh, I kid the self-loving blogger.

(Brussels is considered a kind of business capital of Europe; and it's where the EU is based.)

[Mike Klein]

Murray...

I love you to pieces, but you're a muppet on this one. First, my last posting on my personal blog was in December, which by no system of addition makes my absence one of six months.

Second,we bloggers have no obligation to show up, unlike card-carrying oolumnists like yourself. I did indeed, make myself a twice-a-month publishing commitment on my two blogs, which was fine when I had little to do and much to say.

Now I'm in-house (which has repositioned me as more the student and less the expert), and I'm busy having a good time in one of Europe's coolest and most solvent places (as Brussels floats on a shallow but broad lake of EU cash). Ok, I'll be slighly less ebullient when I announce yet another Blog relaunch...how's that?

:)

Love from Brussels,

Mike Klein
http://FlightKL18.blogspot.com

[David Murray]

Kermit the Frog here:

Sorry, sweetheart--and you know I mean that--but though of course you're right that you don't have an "obligation" to update your blog regularly, you haven't begun to challenge my contention that you WILL lose readership if you take long absences, and that such readership will be hard to win back. And then you'll lose it again .....

In any case, good to hear you're bathing in dough. Remind us what that's like; many of us haven't been doing that since a year before we all canceled our subscriptions to Fast Company and stopped talking about the "new economy."

The question for you is, why blog at all?