Thoughts on quality blogging

"Creating and maintaining a corporate blog, or a blog of any sort for that matter, isn’t always the easiest of tasks and doesn’t come naturally to most people. There are a lot of considerations to take into account — theme, topics, audience, content, design, writers, multimedia, promotion, writing style, comment policies, and so on. Above and beyond all of that, you also need to consider the blog’s name and URL."  (read more on Mashable)

Trafficking...? Not so much..

 I was approached the other day by two brothers with a business plan: to develop a prostitution business.

My spontaneous reaction: Not so much.

When I was kid I never pictured myself one day telling my father: "Look dad what I did with my life and all the opportunities which were open to me! Aren't you proud?".

   Neither did I ever encounter one book or curriculum in business school about how to become a player in the human trafficking and sexual slavery circuit.That was never my goal during all those nights studying management, macro theory and political economy.

The guys who approached me come from a Swedish upper middle-class family and have for some reason decided that this is the best they can do with their lives. Somehow they pictured me as a consultant and potential partner in this far-fetched "success story"...
   I'm guessing this is one of the consequences of too much drug experimenting. There may surely be other reasons, albeit unbeknownst to me.

Sure, I may have a "complicated relationship" with feminists and I certainly am no fan of Sex & The City. That does not extend to a desire to open some form of  "DVD & Body Rental Service".

People usually approach me for sound advice on how to establish careers or develop brands in diverse business sectors ranging from the computer industry to music, modeling or social media. 

Why these two guys came up with the impulse to approach me about how to become slave managers... well... once again, I am guessing it has something to do with the well-known hazards to the brain functions of people who do "recreational" drugs.

Why not just say: "I blog when I blog - deal with it"...?

I must say I am a little... questioning, to how often bloggers apologize for their sporadic interest in their blogging. Why not just say up front: "I blog when I blog"...?

Maybe I haven't "got the hang" of this thing called Internet, after having consulted successfully and developed several $ million online businesses for over a decade.. Or maybe this typical behavior is just one more example of the detachment from basic etiquette that many people suffer when they try to apply some inept form of online "netiquette".

Maybe they view blogging as having penpals: many who have penpals write only sporadically and then when they decide to take their time to communicate something, they start by more or less stating the obvious: - "I have done other things than write to you."

- "You haven't been a priority".
- "Actually, you have been on the bottom of the bottom of my non-priority list".

Why bother? Is that supposed to come off as sincere, humble and well-bred? It's not. It's arrogant and nonchalant.

Imagine not showing up for work for a couple of months and then dropping in and telling the boss: "I've been on the beach, to the movies, hung out with friends, spent whole days on the couch watching TV and so on. I am sorry I haven't checked in earlier,  but I've just been so busy."

No? Not the same thing? Because you don't have the same obligations to readers as you have to your workplace?

My point exactly. Real journalists actually do have obligations to their readers, and they take their newspaper seriously. Imagine a newspaper being published haphazardly with the above "excuses". It would be out of circulation in no time. 

Very few people would even conceive of behaving towards or speaking to their employers that way. As a matter of manners and respect. No one in their right mind would routinely stand people up by not showing up for booked meetings or dates and seriously expect that a: "Oh, I was busy that night" will suffice.
No one with realistic expectations of wanting to be taken seriously will want to project an image of being disorganized and condescendingly "absent-minded".

So why project it online to potentially thousands or millions of people? "I want you to be around when I have nothing better to do and to love me for not caring that much about updating you".

Why not simply include in the presentation once and for all that: "Due to other obligations I will regrettably only be able to drop in here sporadically."
There's no crime in being otherwise engaged. 

Or why not, like periodicals do, schedule publishing dates in advance and deliver what you promised. There's no law that blogs are supposed to be "Daily News". Schedule once a week or month or less but keep it. People will know when to tune in and it's not like there are no other texts to read or films to watch meanwhile.

Or simply inform that: "I blog when I blog... Feel free to drop in now and then".

But: "I am sorry again for not updating.. I am so busy in my life and you are not...", that's just complacent and inept.