Buzz Marketing with Blogs: Blogs Build Relationships (Not)

Blogs Build Relationships (Not)

I was catching up on reading Jory Des Jardin’s blog, Pause, yesterday, when I started thinking about how few blogs cause me to want more contact with the writer than I get just through reading. Now, I really enjoy reading Jory’s blog. Her posts are frequent, invariably thoughtful, written with a deft hand, and she touches on a broad and unpredictable range of topics. Plus, they are loooong. This girl has got the essay-type blog post going on. And I like it. I enjoy seeing what the latest subject is, and the length of her posts gives her room to really explore her ideas. Plus, I met Jory briefly (among so many others at BlogHer), so it’s a pleasure to be able to put a face to words, so to speak. But what really got me thinking yesterday was the fact that reading Jory’s posts makes me want to get to know her better.

“I bet we could be friends,” I found myself thinking (perhaps presumptuously). “At any rate, it would be cool to get to know her better, because reading these blog posts is great, but it’s pretty one-sided.”

And that got me thinking about the other blogs I read, and how there are a very few that have ever prompted this response from me. Mostly, unless I read the blog because they are already an offline friend, I’m pretty content with simply reading blog posts, and—very occasionally—leaving a comment. It’s pretty darn rare for me to want more than I’m already getting. I have heard a lot of stories of people meeting up with the bloggers they read while traveling, and the occasional friendship, but most of those stories have been from hardcore bloggers and the extremely social.

Sure, I know a bit about Jory’s life from reading her blog, but she knows next to nothing about mine. I have as much a “relationship” with her as I do with any journalist, novelist, or columnist that I read.

So, really, I wonder about the phrase I’ve used a million times: “Blogs are about building relationships.” Are they really? Don’t most relationships grow, change, deepen? Is there really a chance for that with a blog, or does it just feel like it?

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 01/26 at 12:43 PM • Blogs

Comments

It is true that after a while one can get a better understanding of someone’s blog character or blog beliefs merely by subscribing to their blog and perusing their posts, and most importantly, their responses to commentors of their posts.

I would call that the BPIF (or Blog Post Index Factor). To qualify, a blogger must have a minimum of 25 blogs and a BFIF (Blog Frequency Index Factor) of less than 3, meaning no more than 3 days should pass between posts.

Only then, we would have a better idea and possibly start the BRDP (Blog Relationship Development Process).

What do you think?

Posted by metin on 01/26 at 01:27 PM
What I meant was “. . . a blogger must have a minimum of 25 posts . . .” to achieve a BPIF of 25+

Posted by metin on 01/26 at 01:29 PM
In my case, blogging community is a *primary* benefit. I’ve been at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando all week, and a significant topic has been blogging. A number of us bloggers have never met IRL, but we feel like we know each other. There were also a few sessions devoted to blogging, and they were very well-received.

To see and touch on how blogging flavored the event, you can check out a bloggregator site that pulled feeds from a number of the bloggers…

http://smokey.rhs.com/web/bloggregate/v2beta1.nsf/feed.rss?OpenAgent&category=Lotusphere 2006&count=50

Posted by Duffbert on 01/27 at 06:05 AM
Do blogs build relationships? No, I don’t think they do. How we interact with each other, either online or offline, builds relationships.

Personally, I use blogging as a method to compile others’ opinions and to share my own. While that allows for coversation and connections, it’s too brief an interaction for friendship.

My brief input…

Posted by Paloma Cruz on 01/27 at 07:40 PM