Sage page — expert blogging advice from Guy Kawasaki
“It [a blog] has to be gold. If it’s something great, I could almost make the case that you just need to get out of the way.”
~ Guy Kawasaki
Beginning bloggers have a lot on their minds — What blog system should I use? What will I name my blog? How often should I blog? How do I get comments (and readers)? Et cetera. So, while I have plenty of my own ideas, I also want to spread the wisdom of the expert bloggers.
In this 15 minute video interview, Guy Kawasaki, evangelist, entrepreneur, investment banker, and venture capitalist, shares his insights on blogging, marketing, and evangelizing. Watch the video, then check out what I thought were some of the interview’s highlights.
Types of blogs
- Rant/rave
- Eassyist saving the world
- News
Guy’s top blogging tips
- Focus on content. Sound familiar? If you want ideas for how to source your blog content, check Sources of value-rich content for your blog.
- Think of each post as a chapter in a book. Make it cogent. Have a beginning and end. Have a purpose.
- Collect email addresses (in general) so you can tell your acquaintances that you have a blog.
Guy’s personal practices (and thoughts)
- Spend’s 2-3 hours each day blogging. Says, “There’s no economic payback for that. . . . At some point you either get your jollies by being in the Technorati 100 or you also have a higher purpose.”
- Uses his RSS feeds to search for new material. Though he says, “I don’t read any blogs.”
- Monitors the blogosphere for mentions of himself. He or his virtual assistant may respond to other’s posts/comments.
- Will be doing more book reviews/interviews. He says that this can become a self-fulfilling act, because authors and PR professionals then send him books regularly to review.
Guy’s thoughts about linking
“There’s a theory about links that the more links you give the more links you get. Technorati is obviously counting links. But what I find very, I think, almost morally wrong is I get approached all the time by people who say, ‘I saw your blog. If you link to my blog, I’ll link to your blog.’ and I never do that. I tell them, ‘Listen. You make an independent decision. If you think my blog is good for your readers, link. If you don’t, don’t. I, in turn will read your blog. If I think it’s good, I’ll link. If I don’t, I won’t. But it’s not quid pro quo. . . . If you blogroll somebody [add them to your list of links to other blogs], you have a moral obligation to your reader. And it’s not because, you know, you’re swappin’ spit. I mean, it’s more than that.”
~ Guy Kawasaki
To which I say, right on Guy! (And, if you happen to like what I’ve written here, feel free to link to me 
.) Feel free to add your thoughts on Guy’s advice, practices, and insights in the comments section.
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3 comments. Thank you for sharing! »
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Makes a lot of sense. As a side note: it will interesting to know how the video player works or rather how it embedded into another wordpress blog. I am asking from the point of view where I create a video and want to share it.
Regards
Johan
Comment by johan — August 19, 2007 @ 11:25 am
This is the first time I’ve used this player Johan. I’ve had good luck with it and YouTube so far. It seems that IE doesn’t like to show the YouTube videos I showcase, yet at least the video link is always there for people to follow.
Comment by Shonnie Lavender — August 20, 2007 @ 11:20 am
Hi Thanks for the reply.
I noticed the same problem and use a plugin from
http://an-archos.com/anarchy-media-player and it works
well. In the past I was stuffed because I am using Mozilla
and never looked at IE.
Comment by johan — August 20, 2007 @ 12:09 pm