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Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

lars-christian.com

41–50 of 131 posts

Re: Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

#41
post #26

The point of the article is one I align with: You're writing it for yourself, 99% of the time. The other 1% is the future you. I blog for work. I don't discuss it with family. I think I'd find it very stressful answering the "why did you say that" questions. The corollary of this, is that I write notes by hand in almost every meeting I attend, and never ever read them again -But for things like IETF I do a mixture of…

I take many handwritten notes throughout the day like you, but found that reviewing them for 2 minutes at the start of the next day has high return on investment.

Re: Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

#42
While I don‘t write much, my website is directly associated with my real name. As a result, friends regularly stumble upon it.

Most of them don’t care for the topics I write about. However, they usually get a little excited, as if they found a real-life Easter egg.

Re: Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

#43
Some do, mostly when the problem they are trying to solve is somewhere in my blog past. I've learned over the years not to advertise the blog/page, due to weird questions I get, for example: Q: How costly is this? (A: it's free, minus my time), Q: Why is it so ugly? (A: When you write your perfect jekyll skin, I will use it, you know it's about my future self searching for the info, not about beauty), Q: Why? (A: I always find something interesting to read in my blog, unlike your corporate page). p.s. The long-tail effect has been predicted at least 20 years ago, so I understand that views will be low or none: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail

My blog: https://brontosaurusrex.github.io/

Re: Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

#45
post #15

I have a blog that has all my book reviews that I've written over the past ~17 years. It's got over 1000 reviews on it. I post them all to Goodreads as well. Hardly anyone read them on my own blog. It's convenient for me to have them all in one spot so I can export them and whatnot. I've had one review that a successful blogger (now substacker) linked to and that probably resulted in more than half the hits the blog…

> Posting to Goodreads people seem to appreciate more.

Yeah because reviews there are put into context of other reviews. I never google for book reviews, because I expect mostly spam. I always go directly to goodreads or amazon.

Re: Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

#46

During the early days of Blogging (I meant the early 2000s), when we met up in person during conferences, we talked a lot about blog posts, etc. I once let one of my cousins tag along as I spoke at a conference organized by Macromedia. I did the usual thing with others there, talking about blogs. When we returned home, my cousin said, “You are kind of a deal. People know you by your blog - brajeshwar.com.” I’ve been…

> when we met up in person during conferences, we talked a lot about blog posts

Now people talk about high engagement twitter threads, linked-in posts or just film each other filming each other for their "content".

Re: Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

#47
post #6

Even many personal blogs these days are suspect, they’re building a brand. I like this guy is doing his own thing.

Can you tell me the difference between building a brand and this guy ? I struggle to understand what this means, as I dont know what "building a brand" means when a person does it.

Wanting attention and for other people to remember you with the purpose of getting ahead later on, by getting favors from the audience, selling things to the audience, etc. Commonly done back in the day to later send traffic to whatever SaaS you'd try to start.

Re: Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

#48
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell me the difference between building a brand and this guy ? I struggle to understand what this means, as I dont know what "building a brand" means when a person does it.

A good enough personal brand means you have a name (generally) disconnected from your individual job and you are known as an entity in your own right, often not entirely pinned to a single discipline. The most cynical example here is probably Kylie Kardashian, ostensibly a billionaire entrepreneur, but you could just as easily sub in a lot of modern content creators like Mr. Beast. These can come about naturally thro…

Thank you for taking the time to expand that, you've said it more clearly than what I have been able to find elsewhere.

Re: Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

#49
post #16

I showed my Mom my personal website a few years ago, and her only comment was it needed more pictures, so I added a picture of a window plant to exactly one page. I haven't showed it to anyone else IRL. https://brynet.ca/article-x395.html

The subject in the picture is the bottle of wine, not the plant.

Re: Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

#50
The people in your real life don't give a shit about your blog.

But random strangers do! At least, if you're contributing something to the world which is wonderful and useful.

In my experience, the posts which get the most traffic are simply not going to be the ones you think they will be. I am thinking of both my public and internal blog posts at my company - the most read articles are dumb basic shit that nobody thought to write down (but should have), and my greatest masterpieces languor in obscurity.

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