I caught wind of this column via a Tweet from @suzemuse (Susan Murphy of Suzemuse).  Margaret Wente, a Toronto Globe and Mail columnist, published a column called Why are bloggers male?  She makes a number of interesting assertions on how blogging is a male activity and that women communicate differently both in terms of venue and thoughtfulness.  You might want to read the column before reading any further so you can ground yourself.

I’ve written a response to her column.  I have E-mailed it to her separately but I’m publishing it here as well since I thought some of you might have some thoughtful responses to her column.

My response is a bit long, but I hope you’ll be able to read it through to the end.  I’d love to know what you think.

#  #  #

Dear Ms. Wente:

This E-Mail will discuss a (very) recent column you’ve written in order to express my reaction and point of view about that column. It is, of course, your choice to read this E-Mail. I hope you do read it (if you’ve gotten this far, there’s a decent chance that you’ll read the whole thing) and I would appreciate reading your response to my opinion in some fashion. My hypothesis at this point, lacking the ability to read minds, is that it is unlikely that you will do either, but I’ve certainly been proven to be wrong before, so there is always hope that you might choose to do both things.

I read your well-crafted Globe and Mail column (noted above in the subject line of this E-Mail and here with this link) with some interest as I’m both a blogger (I consider myself to be a writer as well but most of my output is published electronically using blogging platforms) and a man. A couple of my female contacts have expressed their disagreement with parts (if not all) of the column, but that is a small sampling of your potential audience. I could point out that you reference small samples of people when you wrote about:

• Your theory about blogging being related to “male answer syndrome”
• The experience of being “struck dumb” in being the presence of stranger
• Women have never held peeing contests – this is speculation and it’s also virtually impossible to prove a negative statement when speaking about an entire gender composed of billions of members over the millennia; I do agree that it seems a bit far-fetched since I have no evidence one way or the other.

But that doesn’t necessarily invalidate your opinions. For that matter, it doesn’t make the opinions of my female contacts incorrect either.

Your reference to Andrew Sullivan makes me think that your opinion of blogs and male blogging in particular are based on Mr. Sullivan’s blog as a typical example. Your reference to the childish and abusive behavior of blog and website commentators – which I certainly don’t dispute as being all too frequent on popular blogs and websites, although I’m very fortunate to not have to worry about such problems at present – is also another example of presenting an overgeneralization. I suspect that you are aware that you are making these generalizations because there is a lot of value to you and your employer in creating a bit of controversy and stimulating some discussion. However, on the off chance that you might truly think that these opinions are factual, I’m going to present a few counter opinions and facts.

Blogging is now used as a more generic term that when bloggers like Andrew Sullivan rode the wave of the emerging medium. Blogs were originally pages full of links with some description (hence the original term weblog, to represent an ongoing log of websites that the blogger had visited.) Over time, as blogging platforms have become more numerous and richer in functionality, it has become much easier to use these platforms to display written and graphical content, while incorporating both audio and video content. The end result is a medium which can closely mimic the layout abilities of magazines, books, and newspapers and do even more. As a result, bloggers have been gravitating towards writing longer form content. Articles published on the web are able to exceed 400 words very easily. In some cases, many bloggers regularly publish 1000 words or more in their articles and posts, accompanied with other embedded media and hyperlinks to other websites.

I’m assuming that these facts are new to you, although it’s quite possible that you do know this already. Even probable.

Let’s both be honest, OK? I think we both know that there are plenty of digital publishers out there who represent different extremes of brevity, contentiousness, depth of feeling, logical arguments, and civility. For some reason you’ve chosen to focus on a (relatively) famous male blogger whose blog posts tend to be relatively short, even compared to many blogs, plus he actually republishes a lot of other people’s content. In fact, I’m making the assumption that Andrew Sullivan is your “ideal” male blogger (i.e. the mental model you have in mind when you write about male bloggers).

The peeing contests that you mention seem to be related to the commentators that I mentioned above. Are you lumping the commentators into the same class as the bloggers themselves? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch? Wouldn’t that be like comparing you (a Globe and Mail columnist) to the people who comment on your blog? I don’t actually see a direct link to the peeing contests that you mention and the commentators. But, of course, the parallel that you could be drawing here is that the kneejerk responses of the commentators could be similar to those of the bloggers themselves, who seem to ejaculate (sorry, but it seems to be a fitting metaphor when you bring in the subject of male answer syndrome and its sexual origins) posts multiple times per day with an admirable recovery period that might make some men jealous if you apply the analogy far enough.

I appreciate the fact that your writing displays a sense of sophistication and craft that “bloggers” seem to lack in your eyes. In fact, while taking the time to craft a piece of well written opinion, you’ve managed to engage me emotionally and trigger a response. It’s amazing how you’ve managed to provoke a response, much like the opinionated male bloggers that you mention in your column. Except, of course, your method of provocation is somewhat more subtle that the typical pundit blogger that you refer to. As for me, my spelling, grammar, punctuation and tone are more civilized that the commentators that you’ve referred to: folks who are doing the digital equivalent seeing how far their stream of urine will reach and, if they’re feeling ambitious, trying to write profanity or perhaps draw crude sexual imagery with the aforementioned streams. Hopefully I haven’t mistaken your intent here, but given my gender I am occasionally cursed with an inability to appreciate subtlety. Sorry, I was born this way.

It’s interesting that you include a suggestion for creating an audience in your column. Apparently all I would have to do is to write “Margaret Wente is an idiot” and I could likely increase my subscriber and page view counts by some multiple. I could point to studies and statistics (and, come to think of it, actual web sites) which show that there is a plethora of women bloggers, many who are talented and thoughtful, but they also share the blogospheres with more opinionated members of the same gender. But, Ms. Wente, I do not think you are an idiot. Not at all.

The reason is simple: no one with the experience in old and new media that you must have could possibly believe such a stupid idea, that bloggers are exclusively male or that the desire to “blog” is a male behavior. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that the act of “blogging” is now a diverse activity that encompasses many types of digital publishing. Self expression isn’t a gender specific trait. It’s regrettable that you and some of your female friends had difficulty communicating in the presence of strangers. If it helps at all, it certainly isn’t a female-only phenomenon and I suspect it has more to do with personality types and social conditioning than gender. I know I was afraid to speak in front of strangers for many years and even today it doesn’t come naturally unless I feel very strongly about something. Whether it was a change in hormones or personal development, I don’t know, but at least you feel more confident and self-assured and this is a good thing.

Thank you for stimulating some thought today. I’m both E-Mailing you and publishing my response on my blog so that: a) there’s a chance that you’ll read it, as I mentioned earlier and b) other people can weigh in on this topic. Who knows, maybe I’ll finally attract a few trolls with this.

P.S. An obvious advantage of the blogging platform I don’t have the same constraints on column space that newspaper columnists do. Although I’d concede that the more you write, the harder it is to keep someone else’s attention. If you’ve made it all the way to the end of this response, then kudos to you and thank you for taking the time to do so.

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Following yesterday’s post on world building, I made a list of qualities that a blogger with a world builder mentality would have.  They include (in no particular order):

• Have a vision and stay true to it
• Have principles and stick to them
• Devise and implement rules that make sense
• Use a language that isn’t hard to learn
• Describe your world in detail, one blog post at a time – maps are good
• Show and tell – give examples, models, case studies, tips and tricks
• Spotlight great examples that are happening elsewhere
• Work well with other world builders – diplomatic relations
• Don’t be afraid to experiment
• Don’t be afraid to scrap a bad project or mistake
• Take responsibility
• Be a good steward
• Be a benevolent dictator
• Build great things
• Continue to evolve
• Spread hope
• Remember the Golden Rule
• Tell stories
• Celebrate
• Be thankful
• Love thy neighbor
• Offer help
• Answer questions
• Lead conversations
• Offer basic information to those who need it
• Offer advanced knowledge to those who are ready to receive it
• Collaborate
• Do your best work over and over

Do you agree or disagree with any or all of these points?  Was there anything important that I missed?

I’ve created a new resource for bloggers.  It’s pretty simple, but I hope it helps.

For several years I have literally kept three or four binders of printed copies of the blog posts that I have found to be helpful, useful, and inspiring to my work as a blogger and a writer.  I regularly refer back to them for ideas.  They are my most important resource.  I wanted easy Web access to them, though.

If these resources were valuable to me, they might be valuable to other people.

I thought about publishing a blog post on Broadcasting Brain with the links to this information.  That’s great as a one time project, but in order to have lasting value, this should be a dynamic resource that can be added to, changed, and reorganized as needed.   I decided to use Squidoo.  This allows me to create and maintain that list within a lens, which is a type of web page.  There are two main reasons why I choose Squidoo:

1. I’ve used the tool before and I’m comfortable with it.
2. Squidoo allows the lens creator to receive royalty payments based on traffic to the lens and activity on the page like ad clicks.    You can donate your royalties to a charity.  In my case, I like the idea of Room to Read – I think illiteracy is a horrible setback to anyone’s quality of life and this is a way to help more people learn how to read.  Disclosure:  I maintain a few lenses which make enough income to buy a bag of potato chips during a good month.

So, yes, it’s a Squidoo lens.  And… 100% of the royalties from this lens will go to Room to Read.  Why not do some good while providing information to bloggers?

Go check out The Blogging Lens.  I want it to be the best central resource out there with links to the best content about blogging.  And remember, you can help raise money for Room to Read by visiting and supporting The Blogging Lens.

If you have any links that you think should be added to The Blogging Lens, let me know and I’ll include the best, top notch content on the lens.  It should contain all of the good information about blogging that we all would want to refer to.

Thanks for your support!

The image in this post was created by John Cox & Allen Forkum. See the original: http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000478.html

Image via Wikipedia

Blogging is just one form of content creation and creative expression available to us all on the Web.  The term blog, or weblog, has been around for twelve years.  People were journaling and posting articles and other content on the Web long before that.  People have been self-publishing in other media for hundreds of years.

Plenty of people have advice on the best ways to write a post, getting traffic to your blog, making money from your blog, and so on.

Some people will give you lots of advice on the topic(s) that you should focus your blog on.

It seems like we’ve got this whole blogging thing covered.

But then there’s one other little question that’s the most interesting of all…

WHY?

Why do we blog?  Why do we write? Why do we spend hours upon hours slaving in front of computers?  Why do we wring our brains madly on a regular basis trying to think of new and interesting things to say?  Why do we get frustrated when the words won’t come?

Some people create content in order to make money directly off their blogs by selling advertising, using affiliate links to sell stuff (I do this through my book reviews but I try not to be a PITA about it), selling their own products, etc.  That’s fine.  It’s pretty obvious that some people are trying to make their living directly through selling stuff on their blog and that’s cool.

Then there are tons of us who aren’t focusing on direct monetization, including a huge group of people who aren’t in it for the money at all.

That is what I’m interested in learning about.

Why do we blog?  More specifically, why do YOU blog?

Yes, it’s reader participation time and I’m writing this specifically for YOU. I’m being nosy today and I want to know why you do it.  What are your goals, dreams, aspirations, hopes, and wishes from this powerful medium:

• Are you burning with the desire to get things off your chest?
• Are you trying to change the world?
• Are you bored and in need of something to occupy your mind?
• Are you communicating for someone who can’t speak for themselves?
• Are you using your blog as a platform or stepping stone for bigger and better things?
• Are you using the blog as a way to connect with like-minded people?
• Are you channeling an alien intelligence?
• Etc.

Many of the items in this list apply to me (although I can’t prove that I’m channeling an alien intelligence… yet…)

I’m really curious about this.  I think introspection is a powerful tool and we can learn a lot by examining why we want to do things.  I think we all learn from seeing these ideas in print.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section so we can all learn from this.  If you write your own post about this, link back to this post and I’ll create a link back to you in this post.

Note:  I guess Ian M Rountree and I are tapped into the same hive mind because he’s written a post about blogging as well.

Bill Wren wrote on this topic some time ago in a post called Does blogging need a reason?

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In business terms, taking stock means to perform a count of your onhand physical inventory to make sure nothing’s lost, ruined, or stolen.  It’s all about keeping the (financial) books balanced.  The mental equivalent of taking stock is to examine your thoughts and feelings about anything and everything to gain clarity, perspective, and an ability to refocus.  Hence, I’m taking stock with this post.

This post on writing (arguing that most bloggers really aren’t writers) has stuck in my mind like the linkbait that it probably was (as per Jonathan Fields’s assessment of the post).  On the one hand, many bloggers are not fiction writers (or maybe they are, especially the ones that are scraping content or putting together content solely for the purpose of selling ads).  On the other hand, some bloggers are great essayists, analysts, journal writers, and entertainers.

I care a bit less about skill than I do about the ability to tell good stories that ring of authenticity and feeling.  I admire people who are willing to put their egos and feelings on the line to tell the world about important things, even if they’re only important to the writer.  I love it when people dig deep into a subject to find the gold.  I especially dig people who engage with their communities and the people that they read about.

I am also fascinated by the idea of timeless, enduring writing.  I’m not convinced that it has to be the product of hours of hard, sweaty, nervewracking work that requires five edits and a legal team to help it see the light of day.  Nor do I think that spewing your surface thoughts onto a screen is the key to enduring prose, either.

I am getting tired of formula, though.  I use it from time to time:  carefully constructed headlines, gripping opening statements, categories, tags, keywords, images, headings, subheadings, etc. to make sure that your content is scannable and easily understood when getting fleeting glances of your iPhone screen as you dash madly to catch your bus or taxi on the way to work.  After all, attention is scarce and we want to focus on relevant content with as little effort as possible.  In a world where we can go numb from exposure to so many choices of opinion, content, and topic, we’ve got to make it easy, right?  Formula provides the road signs, familiar positioning, and fits within existing patterns of perception and cognition and allows the content to slide in with minimal friction.

And then it occurs to me that I don’t like some of my favorite blogs as much as I used to.  Part of the reason is that they’re mature publications in maturing niches, so it can be hard to bring forth new and interesting content.  There’s more of a focus on the quantity of content that’s being produced, of bringing in new voices, of starting to focus more on products and services.

You know what I miss?  I miss some of the thoughtful analysis, deconstruction, and hypothesizing that I was seeing in some of these blogs a couple of years ago (I wrote about some of these kinds of posts here (about paper) and here (about the rise of microblogging) .  I miss the feeling that I felt when some of the stuff I was reading about was new to me and it opened my mind to new possibilities.  Maybe these more meaty posts are out there elsewhere, waiting to be discovered.

If only I manage to retrain my own attention span to watch for them and actually read them through.

Maybe I need to start writing more of them myself.

#   #   #

Somewhere between the lands of business oriented blogging (ultimate goal to sell products and services, although not directly at times); news or journalism (just the facts, man); and personal journaling, I think there’s a realm of debate, exchange of knowledge and ideas that makes us all smarter, more thoughtful, and hopefully generous enough to share without trying to wring every last unit of money out of it.

That’s where I’ve built my treehouse, where I survey the world, and from where I share my thoughts here at Broadcasting Brain.  I don’t have many answers, but I do have lots of questions.  And, of course, you’re always welcome to visit.

What do you think?  Has the larger social media sphere (including blogs, of course) lost something during the past couple of years?  Or am I digitally myopic?

I created a list of 82 possible blog post topics over a year ago.  It was a bit tongue-in-cheek and wasn’t done with a whole lot of thought.  Oddly enough, it’s my most popular post in terms of traffic.

I’ve never been happy with the job that I did on that post.  I could have written something much better if I’d taken more time with it.  I decided to do a better job this time.  The post will help you generate more than 20,000 possible mini-outlines for your blog, articles, essays, or other content, whether it’s personal, business, or something else.  If you publish five posts a week, it could take you until the end of 2099 to use all of these ideas.

Image by dan paluska

A Content Idea Matrix

The way this works is simple:  create a content idea by combining the following three elements:

• a topic
• the subject of the content (who it is about)
• the theme/focus/lesson of the content.

They are all listed in this Content Idea Matrix:

Bookmark this on Delicious

Here are some examples:

• The community you were born + you as a child + bragging/celebrating:  If you were born in New York City, you could write a post describing all of the ways in which New York City has a lot of fun opportunities for children including links, photos, videos, testimonials, etc.
• Your biggest fear + you and your first job + business skills/smarts/lessons, etc.:  You could write an article about your first experience giving a presentation or speech at work and what you learned doing it.
• How you reacted to the introduction of a new medium + write any of the above about a grandparent + discovery:  Write an essay about how one of your grandparents discovered the Internet and what they chose to do on it.
• Any life changing moment + a master + the importance of practice:  Create a post about someone who mastered a skill through lots of practice and their “tipping point” when they realized that all of the practice was making them great at their chosen field, career, or skill.

These are just a few examples.  I’m sure some of them seem obvious and you may have already used them.  Some of these elements might not combine together very well and they might be difficult to work with.  On the other hand, something that might seem awkward or tricky could turn out to be a great piece of content.  As you’ve probably guessed by now, the 20,000+ ideas number comes from the combinations of each of the three elements.  If you do the math, it’s actually more than 30,000 potential ideas but some of the elements might not combine together well, as I mentioned above.

To add more flexibility and possibilities, you could also use different media (text, images, video, sound, or combinations thereof).

A final word about the Content Idea Matrix

This is a creative tool to help you come up with outstanding or remarkable content, but it is only a starting point.  Creating excellent content takes time, effort, patience, thought and skill.  This post, for example, has probably taken about eight ten hours of work from start to finish. My hope is that this tool can help stimulate your thinking and get your creative juices flowing if you’re not sure what to do next.

I hope that you find this matrix to be useful!  If nothing else, I hope it will help you develop some ideas of your own.  Please feel free to share it with other content creators!  If you have links to other good posts on this topic, please feel free to share them in the comments section!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

(sorry, I couldn’t resist…)

If all of these ideas weren’t enough… here are some links to other great ideas from other bloggers:

Problogger.net – Darren’s created a great 2009 year end series of posts about blogging (click on this link)

Problogger.net – here’s another post from Darren about using mind mapping to help develop blog post ideas

The Future Buzz – Adam Singer created a list of 45 Blog Post Ideas That Always Generate Buzz

SEO 2.0 – Tad made a list of 101 Blog Posting Ideas

Chris Brogan.com – Chris’s list of 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write was followed by 20 Blog Topics To Get You Unstuck and 20 Blogging Projects For You

Darren Barefoot – Darren was inspired by Chris’s 100 Blog Topics and then wrote 55 More Blog Posts I Hope You Write

Bakersfield.com – this is just a huge list of blog topics, like 18132 of them…

Vertical Measures – 50 Corporate  Blog Topics

Sparkplugging – Wendy created The World’s Largest Blog Niche and Topic Idea List

Life in Student Ministry – 100 blog topics I hope YOU write (and some of them will surprise and even shock you) – I included this because some of these ideas may be jumping off points to other ideas that aren’t necessarily religion or faith based or they might work very well if you do write about religion, faith, Christianity, etc.

Louis Gray – while not necessarily a list of blog topics, Jesse Stay wrote a post at Louis Gray’s blog called To Blog Or Not To Blog – That Is The Question with some advice on writing posts, including some topic ideas.

Remarkablogger – Michael Martine wrote a post called How to Decide What Your Blog Should Be About When You have Many Interests which can offer some insights into blog material at a macro level and then break it down to lower levels of detail.

Skelliewag -  Skellie wrote a great post on 37 Viral Post Ideas You Can Use Today

Techipedia – Tamar Weinberg shared her Top 6 Ideas for Incredible Viral Content

Big Huge Thesaurus has an interesting tool which displays random blog post topics

Acknowledgement: this post was partially inspired by the Visitor Grid at I Help You Blog.  However, I believe this tool is significantly different in that it comes with suggested idea elements.