Famous? Dirt Poor?
In a recent conversation, a client made the following observation.
So many businesses seem confused about how to use the Internet. They appear to know their own product or service, but they don’t have clients or customers. They built it, and no one came. Has no one found the right model?
Some folks think the answer is to get famous. . . .
A strong personal brand and passion for your niche teamed is what makes a blog a powerful New Media marketing tool. That’s what will build trust, rapport, and reputation equity. Once you have those things, it’s a relatively straight forward process to turn those assets into profit. — Tribal Seduction
I’m with Tim Bourquin’s observations about that.
Twitter, blogs, podcasts and new media in general have created a wave of “famous†people – people with a “wealth†of attention and inbound links, but can’t pay their bills at the end of the month. Worse yet, some seem to think that if you do find a way to make your living successfuly, you’ve “sold out†and are no longer true to your audience. That’s a shame and it needs to change.
The “link†and “attention†may be the currency of the Internet, but until someone can show me how to pay my mortgage by linking to my bank once a month, that just doesn’t fly with me.
Internet famous isn’t “Oprah famous” . . . not even close . . . and the Internet forgets quickly.
When I asked Internet Rockstar, Guy Kawasaki, about what bloggers should know about blogging as business, he said.
The truth is that it’s very difficult to monetize a blog. I have a fairly popular one and sell less than $100,000 of advertising per year on it. It serves other purposes though for my activities as a venture capitalist, author, and speaker.
So to some extent, a blog can help with the overall branding and marketing of a company, but it’s a leap of faith.
A blog by itself isn’t a business. A product without customers won’t sell.
What do you see when you look at online businesses?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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