Welcome to the watered-down reality of all that you loved.
If you read many blogs you’ll notice a general theme. It started with the A-listers and is echoing through the second tier. (of course this theme goes back a long way)
Bloggers are getting burnt out. Not from content overload, not even because of all the noise. This is a classic early adopter response to main stream acceptance.
You can never go back through the door you came in
This may come across as harsh but I’ve dealt with this cycle my whole life. While I am ranting a bit my comments aren’t meant to bash anyone more to offer a friendly kick in the butt.
Anytime a trend that develops on the fringe gets adopted by the mainstream the “cool kids” whine because now every “poser” has jumped their train.
Congratulations bloggers, you finally got what you’ve been asking for. You can now join the ranks of all the cutting edge musicians, fashionistas and artists.
You really have two options at this point: A) Give up B) Dig in
You can accept the fact that corporate America is hip to the business advantages you’ve been preaching all these years OR you can throw a fit, take your ball blog and go home. With Corporate America comes the late adopters we pride ourselves in not being.
If you stay you can help make sure that the watered down version of what you’ve helped build keeps the core elements that make blogging great.
If you leave you become a “what ever happened to…”
Want to know the real reason I think most bloggers get burnt out? They have to put up or shut up. We’ve been talking about all the great things blogging and social media can do for so long that I think many people didn’t ever think they’d actually have to do the things they talked about.
Now’s your chance! Dig in, demonstrate the power that comes from all the tactics you’ve been talking about. Or give up.
The problem is that things never go *exactly* as you thought they would. You can’t just launch a company blog and expect all your evangelist to crawl out of the wood work wielding their word of mouth while they create consumer generated media.
You actually have to work at it; and work and work. Tweek, adjust, relaunch, quantify, justify etc.
You have to play well with other marketing functions. You actually have to communicate with people who don’t have a Google account, don’t know what RSS is and still think blogs are weird.
Sometimes, you have to make trade offs, and suddenly you realize that your purist vision of what you thought the future would look like isn’t *exactly* right.
So to all my blogger and social media brothers and sisters out there who are feeling discouraged: Dig in. Your time is now.
Technorati Tags: Blogger burnout
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