Blogging Is Not A Magic Bean For A Magic Beanstalk
Thursday, August 28th, 2008I wanted to blog about this last week but in the hassle of packing and flying it slipped my mind until I was listening to a Jaffe Juice podcast while wandering around New York today:
Blogging is not about planting magic beans and expecting beanstalks to sprout up. Your blogs are probably not going to affect activation on a large scale for weeks or months! You’ve got to work at this. You’ve really got to work at this. So if you’re not planting those seeds right now, and you don’t have a plan to grow and promote and nurture and join a bigger conversation, then really what are you doing?
I first thought of this while walking past the Raffles Place train station and saw the Xbox/Sheylara poster I’ve been hearing about over the last week. Think about it: to move from a social media channel (a blog) to getting paid mainstream media publicity at one of - if not the most - heavily trafficked train station in Singapore. How does this happen?
With lots of hard work and patience, that’s how.
And that’s the one thing you should keep in mind when you’re blogging or dabbling in social media, be it as a company or brand or individual. You’re not going to make a hit overnight, but if you stick with your passion, you just might.
The earliest archives I can see on Sheylara’s website is December, 2005, but I have no idea if she was blogging before that. In other words, at the very least it took almost two years to really get established in the Singaporean blogosphere and established enough to be picked up by a big company like Microsoft.
There are probably many more reasons, but I can think of at least three that have contributed to this success outside of just “working at it”.
1) Being relatively focused on a niche.
Be it posing with guitars, talking about the latest Xbox games, pictures of she and her friends playing Rock Band and Gamer Girl Fridays, there’s no doubt that Sheylara is one gamer girl. Heck, when I was trying to tell a friend that at least one person in Singapore is playing Rock Band, I showed him her website. She doesn’t blog only about games, but there is a consistency in it that is hard to ignore.
2) Reaching out beyond offline interactions
I also previously blogged about Sheylara “cold e-mailing” to offer her help when we first started Social Media Breakfast | Singapore. I don’t think that got her the Xbox Xpert role per se, but it probably helped people sit up and notice that this is someone to be taken credibly in the local blogosphere. And as we all know, credibility is everything.
3) Being absolutely professional
Unlike certain other female bloggers I shall not mention by name, Sheylara always deals with her detractors with a touch of humour. In fact, I think more often her community are the ones who fight fire with fire. (The company parallel here is letting your antibodies work for you) Again in the social media space, there’s little to no tolerance for bitchfits. Either you can work things out like adults, or you prove to the world you never mentally graduated from kindergarten.
On the flip side, I give absolute credit to Microsoft and their agency for what they have done in this space. One, for moving into the space at all. Two, for selecting a good choice, and three, for taking time to determine that this choice is the best for them. I don’t think the Xbox Xpert happened overnight, but it was a relationship and mutual effort that was slowly worked on and cultivated, as I mentioned in a previous post. Let’s note also that the three points about Sheylara’s efforts online easily extend to a company like Microsoft too.
Again I emphasise that this is an effort that literally can take years to work. I’ve been blogging seriously for about eight months and still haven’t passed the 100 subscriber mark. You just gotta keep telling yourself you’ll reach it some day.
Maybe I should blog about something else for a year and get some company endorsement deal eh? Just kidding, I probably couldn’t tear myself away from this blog if I tried. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a picture that can act as a metaphor for whatever your brand, company, or individual blog is trying to achieve.
(Full disclosure: Sheylara is a friend of mine and we work together on Social Media Breakfast | Singapore. I also do not know the exact details of the Xbox Xpert deal, but am commenting on the process as an observer of the social media space)
Tags: blogging maturely, blogging niches, blogging takes patience, jaffe juice, magic beans, magic beanstalks, podcast, raffles place mrt, sheylara, social media breakfast singapore, xbox xpert
