On Guest Blogging
Is it me, or is the trend toward “Guest Blogging” about the most obnoxious thing to emerge from the blogosphere yet?
If you’ve got something to say, say it. If you don’t have anything to say, say nothing for awhile. It’s okay, your Constant Readers probably won’t unsubscribe unless you go completely silent for a couple of months. We all have busy times, or periods where we just need to take a break from blogging.
To those who think Guest Blogging is a great idea, please consider just posting some links to the potential guest’s blog. If I think what he or she has to say there is worthwhile, I’ll subscribe to it. Just don’t assume that because I subscribed to your blog that I want to get posts from someone else.
To those who have been Guest Bloggers — what benefit did you see from doing it? Any increase in readership? Any backlash?
I just don’t see the point. More specifically, I don’t see the benefit to the readers. The Guest Blogger concept seems invasive to the reader, as if the “opt-in” inherent in subscribing to a particular feed populated by one author has been violated by inviting another author to post without the reader’s consent.
Is this trend just a result of boredom by bloggers who’ve been at it for a long time? Or is there something else I’m missing?
Updated: I’m not the only one getting annoyed by this.
I can see your point(s).
As a guest blogger, I’m getting the following:
1. a chance to see what kind of stuff robert deals with by having a popular blog associated with MSFT. This is fun(lots of readers), intresting (helping a guy who got hacked), and an oppertonity (or a risk).
2. new skills and motivation to blog on my site. I’ve had a blog off an on since 2002. I’ve never been super hip or popular, but i was “regular”. I kind stopped hard in early 2004, and a lot has changed since then. Getting a chance to write on scoble’s blog is forcing me to learn and grow.
3. connecting with intresting people. People have left comments on scoble’s blog and sent emails to me that I probably wouldn’t have met if there was just a link to my blog. In the end, I hope this is a good thing for readers and for me…new friends are always good!
4. its kind of fun. Maybe it’ll only be for me, but in the end I hope it is for readers of both scoble and maybe my blog.
Hope that answers the questions…I don’t have data on readership of my blog yet, but if it is intresting I’ll let you know. I suspect it will go up for a while, level, and then drop down.
bubba
Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
From a corporate point of view, its better than PlanetSun or PlanetSolaris, that are basic RSS feeds aggregators. This way the Scobelizer keeps up the momentum, and gives his readers to get to know more about the “human side” of MSFT. It could evolve into a MSFT Blog Magazine, with Robert Scoble as the Editor-in-chief.
Alex Goncalves
Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 1:00 am
I left a comment on the first post by Robert Scoble’s guest “worker” and it got promptly removed. Part of his cleansing of the comments section of anything negative. I have to agree, his guest blogger - bubba murarka, wasn’t great. Sorta like an apprentice, not bad, but definitely not on par with Scoble’s regular prose. Though sometimes with Scoble there is so much industry insider-stuff I get lost.
Carolus.Holman
Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 at 4:27 pm