13 comments

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  Susan

  2 years ago

  You've got my attention with the 0.8 - that's really high (one nerd to another) - so where's the rest of the story?????????
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  Every Square Inch

  2 years ago

  How powerful is my blog? Not very... but I'm not sure I'm focused on making it so. I am very intrigued about your bee/hive analogy.
  
  So I'll be tuning in to learn more from your series on collective blogging power.
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  Karin H.

  2 years ago

  Hi Marcus
  
  I am intrigued as to where this will take you/us.
  But....
  "And wouldn’t it be cool if we knew the most effective ways to work together?"
  knowing what works now (or when you/we find out) doesn't have to mean it will work 'tomorrow' ;-)
  
  At the moment I think the best way to help the 1% of bloggers who create content (that phrase comes from Citizen Marketers - great book!) is to give 'new' bloggers confidence - by leaving proper, meaningful comments on their posts.
  
  Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
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  L.L. Barkat

  2 years ago

  Here's the power of my blogs. And it has nothing to do with big numbers....
  
  Last week, a childhood friend admitted she's been lurking on my blogs. And you know what? She waits for me to post, with anticipation, because it makes her life better. That's what she said. "I can always hope for one more post from L.L."
  
  To quote a tired ad campaign, that's priceless.
  
  (On another note, come read my bad poetry on Seedlings. Just for you. Well, and Eve. Okay, and Annette. All right, and that big blog community you were talking about.)
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  spaghettipie

  2 years ago

  Okay, I'm definitely intrigued about what you're up to. And boy, it's been a while since I've taken statistics...looking forward to reading more.
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  Rory

  2 years ago

  Now think about all the active bloggers. Not the 75 million number. I’m talking about the 15 million who post at least once every three months according to Phil Gerbyshak.
  
  Once every three months is considered an active blog?! Does that mean 60 million are just sitting there doing nothing? That's a pretty staggering statistic.
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  Charity Singleton

  2 years ago

  Marcus -- This is fascinating. I have thought about whether my blog has a purpose or not. If it doesn't, I need to pack up. I've also thought about who I am writing for -- 20-30 active commenters and probably another 40-50 active readers who would never comment are probably my "regulars" from anecdotal evidence. But I'm still a little fuzzy on what the grand goal would be for all of us working together. I'm intrigued to see where you are heading.
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  Marcus

  2 years ago

  Susan. The o.8 is no lie, but there's a caveat. My data set on this test was too low to be reliable. I worked with a statistician on the numbers, and he said they were good enough to make estimates. And certainly good enough to suggest a very high correlation. But there is still work to be done. Hang in there, I'll give the formula soon.
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  Marcus

  2 years ago

  ESI, I'm not on a power trip here or anything. It's easy to get sucked into some kind of pipe dream about monetizing hobbies into billion dollar businesses. That's not what I'm talking about.
  
  I just want to work with more intentionality--and pass that on to others. That's it.
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  Marcus

  2 years ago

  Karin and L.L.,
  
  I agree with you completely that the power of blogging is really the social part of social media.
  
  Commenting on someone's site. Linking to someone's site. Both of those activities are ways to use technology to remind others that the internet is a network of humans, not computers.
  
  And Karin, I totally agree about not putting too much into predictive models. A model is only true for the exact scenario under which it was developed.
  
  Still, I find it very helpful just to describe what happened. Using what happened to speculate on future strategy is just icing on the cake. That's the fun part.
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  Marcus

  2 years ago

  spaghettipie, thanks for commenting! I hope you'll stick around and help us think through the implications of all this.
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  Marcus

  2 years ago

  Rory, thanks for commenting. That statistic boggled my mind too. Wendy Piersall speculated that 37 million of the 75 million are really splogs--blogs with no content except google adwords. En masse, I suppose splogs could generate some income. But those of us who plan on riding this social media wave all the way to shore need to remember the real key. Content is king.
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  Marcus

  2 years ago

  Charity, I don't have a grand goal or anything. I'm just trying to look at exactly what happened and think through the implications for we can learn from it to become better bloggers.
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