Photo by ice_ix
A few days ago, Hutch Carpenter wrote a post that talked about reader responses to shared items that appear in FriendFeed, that massive RSS feed aggregator.
A couple of his closing paragraphs summarize his argument quite well:
Sometimes people get exasperated that something they’ve blogged about or posted didn’t get a lot of traction, while an A-Lister talks about the same thing and everyone falls over themselves to Like, comment, share the content, etc. This is generally ascribed to an overly worshipful flock. I’m sure there’s a bit of truth in that.
However, I think an overlooked element is that a lot of the well-known figures out on the web have a strong narrative.
When they share something, it’s really part of the larger narrative they’ve been sharing with a lot of people over time.
Hutch described the narrative effect earlier in his post, referencing some thoughts from Robert Scoble:
There’s an additional factor [that determines how people respond to the items that you share compared to when other people share the same materials.] Here’s one way to describe it:
1. Experience and passions make up your narrative, the story of your life.
2. A narrative gives context.
3. Context loads the information you share with meaning.
4. Meaning draws interest by others.
Here are Hutch’s closing thoughts:
What’s Your Story?
I bring up A-Listers because its a familiar meme. But there are regular people who have a particularly strong narrative in a subject area. You see people reacting to the content they share, because it fits what they’re about.Strong narratives make people strong Information Filters.
How about you? What’s the story of your life?
This topic is a bit difficult for me write about because it hits upon of my own insecurities as a writer and a blogger. I touched on this the other day when I wrote about my first anniversary of being a blogger:
The other ongoing revelation, of course, is that I’m continually learning how much I have to learn about blogging, technology, communication, and life in general. Every time that I think I have a firm grasp on what’s going on, I discover something new that makes me realize how much there is to learn.
The fact that I experience the occasional feeling of sheepishness and embarrassment is probably a good sign. Despite Robert Seidman’s concern that I really was sending out an SOS (which I wasn’t, I just liked the song lyric), I’m not getting ready to throw in the towel. It’s just that I’m becoming more self-conscious about communicating opinions off the cuff without doing my research and analysis first.
Photo by ElecktraCute
I believe that a number of people, especially when commenting on other people’s work, freely give opinions without necessarily understanding the details of what they are talking about. Sometimes I have to lump myself into this category, although I’m trying to be more conscious of it. A number of us consume a lot of media during the course of the day and, to be blunt, we leave a comment on it which is more like a calling card or a small piece of self-promotion than reasoned analysis.
One of the reasons that we do this is to make our presence known in the blogging world and in other forms of social media. The problem, however, is that many times we misunderstand what’s being written or we put our own slant on the topic for our own reasons.
Is this a bad thing?
I guess it depends on your motivation (Maslow’s hierarchy is all about motivation). It probably works well as a piece of self-promotion, but on the other hand it might just leave people with the wrong impression about you. Or, in some cases, a regrettably accurate picture of you. In other words, yes, it is a bad thing.
Getting back to Hutch’s point: all opinions won’t have equal weight in the eye of the informed reader. The informed reader knows the subject and the experts. Thus, although two different people may make a recommendation or venture an opinion, the known source will always win out over the newbie because of the name recognition and credibility of the veteran. Eventually, through hard work, networking, and persistence, a talented social media user will earn that cred. It’s just not reasonable to expect it overnight.
Everyone has the right to express an opinion and sometimes we overlook good ideas because they don’t seem to come from a credible source. I fully expect that Darren Rowse’s opinions on professional blogging and digital photography will have more weight than mine, as will Louis Gray’s on tech startups and major league baseball, and Robert Scoble’s on video, interviewing, and a bunch of other things.
At the same time, I could probably speak more authoritatively on midrange systems, ERP applications, comic books, science fiction, and poutine than any of these three.
So, yeah, authority does play a big part in your recommendation.
What do you think?
It isn't necessarily a bad thing to ventilate an opinion without having done research. That is what an opinion is, a personal view about a subject. Having said that I have noticed and noted before that people often enter on-line discussions without actually having read the post where it all started with. Often bold statements are provided as truths without some sort of indication that it is an opinion. As a result discussions on Friendfeed for example sometimes seem to have become a long list of bold statements where people aren't really discussing anything, or wander off from the intent of the blog post itself (it gets hijacked).
I'm not sure if it is a bad thing. Sometimes it helps to be bold and it leads to more interesting interactions. But as a reader you will always need to make your own judgment about the trustworthiness of any statement, including the blog post that is written
To your point, if the writer makes it clear that his or her comment is just that, a knee-jerk reaction or opinion, then I don't have a problem with that. However, if you're just echoing common knowledge or else spitting in the face of generally accepted practices just to self-promote, I'd have to question the value of doing that.
Agree
OK, this is just too weird. It is as if you have some sort of crystal ball to see what is going on in my world!
I had pretty much stopped commenting on any blogs with my opinions because although I had read the post, it seemed I was not getting the author's intentions most of the time. I am a fairly well educated person and I tend to pick up on things rather quickly, but I think my problem was reading too much too quickly. After enough embarrassment, I have slowed myself down and have forced myself to re-read any posts that I want to comment on, to make sure that my opinion is even related to what the author has written.
There are those who are just out there to spam the comments to add their links to a site or just to get their name to be recognized, but it's nice to see that you are also recognizing that there are those of us who are just moving way too fast for our own good.
What can I say, I'm talented. Oh, and don't eat the fish at the next restaurant that you visit – it'll be bad.
I wasn't (and am not) worried about you, Mark I just like early 1980s pop culture references, liked the song lyric myself and wanted to send some link love
My comment on your piece in general here is if you want to breakout of the echo chamber and rise above it to have a bigger audience, it's a challenge. I mean you're focused on a niche not that many people care about in general (relatively speaking) and though Louis' is a remarkable story, even with all his growth on a page view basis his blog is teeny tiny.
It's very hard to differentiate yourself when there are dozens (or hundreds) doing the same thing. This doesn't mean it can't be done, but increases the level of difficult substantially. It's not always clear to me that most of the people gazing their navels on this topic really are interested, motivated or willing to do the work involved with rising above to stand out from the crowd. In fact, in most cases it seems clear they are not.
It's hard to stand out even if you are motivated and interested, but it's a lot harder when you're not. Many seem to wish to externalize this and make it a function of something other than themselves. I believe that's folly, but that's just my opinion. It's not knee-jerk reaction, but it is just an opinion nonetheless.
Yes, I agree with what you are saying. Your opinion is reasoned AND you've been doing this quite awhile as well.
Hello Mark,
Greetings from the world of triiibes. I really like Carpenter's observation about strong narratives, especially the notion of a shared narrative that develops over time. It makes for an interesting goal for developing a blog. Darren Rowse is definitely a good example of a blogger with a strong narrative, and it's a narrative that seems to extend beyond his authoritative voice on professional blogging.
As for comments, I'm generally guilty of spending too much time on them. I tend to think through what I'm going to say and edit frequently in notepad before pasting into the comment box. Don't know if it makes my comments any better, but I do try to avoid being a comment spammer.
Hi Bill. That's a very thoughtful way to approach comments.