Is there any integrity left in the world of blogging?

In daily meanderings on the web I came across this article by John Cow the internet marketing guy (no not John Chow though they are very similar… funny that).  This publicity stunt had people believing the John Cow website was shutdown because it was hacked.  Some people thought the stunt was funny and clever whilst some thought it was evil or poor marketing.  This guy said it undermined his whole brand and I think that is an apt description.   Other people were asking questions about advertising and whether it was fair to the people who pay money that they missed out on 24 hours worth of advertising.  Isn’t that a breach of contract?

Using controversy to get attention is nothing new.   Richard Branson does it masterfully well and so have others.  I am reminded of Peter Spann’s use of the concept of leverage in his book.  He uses the concept to explain that you can have positive and negative leverage.  Negative leverage is like having a virus you can’t cure.  It keeps bringing you bad publicity.  Positive leverage gives you something that keeps flowing positivity in your direction.  I think John Cow’s stunt may actually be a ploy that could ultimately back fire.  Why?  Because it lacks integrity.

In an earlier post I pointed out how some people value money more than relationships and people and you can tell this by the it’s not personal it’s business line that they use.  There is nothing wrong with making money (I would be a hypocrite to say otherwise) but you can by still be entrepreneurial and have integrity.  That is, you can make money and do so in a way where people are not deceived.   Check out this latest problogger post on how to get noticed on popular blogs.  I noticed a comment from Missy that I thought was relevant.   She argues that a lot of the comments on blogs (generally speaking) are congratulatory rather than critical and I would have to agree.  Ryan also wrote in the comments:

    What about shamelessly saying I’ve got next to no readers at all, and everyone should visit my boring blog right now? It’s not even a joke… I really do have next to no     readers, and I’m quite sure if I was someone else, I’d find my blog boring as hell. So everyone… if you want to see some boring stuff, you know where to look eh?

Man do I know how he feels! So my question is this:  is there any integrity left in the world of blogging?  Ok, so I have framed the debate somewhat by using a yes/no box … sorry about that.   Let me climb out.  Ahh, that’s better. The point I got out of Ryan’s comment relates in a different way to John Cow’s stunt.   Ryan, I think, is speaking out of sarcasm and making fun of people who write comments in blog posts that are designed to drive traffic.   Not promote debate or discussions.  Maybe I am idealist… but I think a blog should be a space to build communities and share ideas.   When we use words like ‘traffic’ we should also use words like ‘value adding to human lives’ for without one how can the other exist?  We have this silly attitude about being in business that says, ‘well I am in this to make money… not make friends.’   Yes but people engage with you because of the essence of what you are doing and the relationship you are building with them.

I learned this through teaching evaluations.  In one semester I was complete Nazi to my students and I scored low.  When I freed up I realised that I scored a whole point higher!  I can’t say this enough times… what people believe is a perspective or a point of view.  Now, what did I change to provoke that result.  Lots of things.  In particular I changed how I related to students.  Most importantly, I did would I could do to change how they perceived me. I began to talk with them and treat them like human beings and not cattle (or traffic).   If you are conning people or deceiving them after a while you will have this as your reputation and people will really believe you are like this. Don’t believe me?  What about people like Bill Clinton?  What do you remember him for?

Take a look at the top five blogs at technorati.  Heres a list I got this morning:

1. Boing Boing

2. Problogger

3. TechCrunch

4. LifeHacker

5. Engadget

What do they have in common?  Let me see:

1. They provide valuable information to a community 

Each one of these popular provide information that groups of people (i.e. communities of practice) find interesting.  Did they just get lucky… I think so.  Most of them appeal to cultures, groups and ideas.  Blogging, at least to me, appeals to communities.  It’s a way to engage with similar minded people for very little cost and it represents a way to add value (see my later point).

2. They provide most of their advice free

This goes without saying but I need to add something here which I think is important.  The internet is a part of free culture.  People want stuff for free.  I know, why should I work my butt off writing stuff that I may never make money out of?  Think about that while I work out a reasonable answer.

3. They add value firstly and secondly focus on how that value can be used to make money 

Value is added to people’s life by these sites.   They make money because of this perceived value adding.  They don’t make money through controversy, smart or dumb tactics or anything else.  People see the value and spread it for them.  Read this if you want to see what I mean here.

4. They grew a reputation through people

People make things popular because they see the value and share it with others.  As a blog grows in popularity it’s because of the ‘integrity’ of that blog in the eyes of the readers.  Integrity means the value and personal character of the blog itself.   It also means the authority that blog has in the eyes of the community.  Authority is the toughest thing to build because it requires a validation process.  I wonder, how do we validate things?  How do we determine authority?

So is there any integrity left?  Of course there is but this is a business model we are talking about.  Whenever money comes into the picture there are bound to be stunts like John Cow’s that provoke people to write stuff like this.  My question is: is this really the right thing to do?  There are several answers we need to consider here:  First, will it help the blogger in the long term?  There are those that think this kind of stunt will have a negative effect on John Cow.  I think it will further polarise his audience and weed out those that aren’t of the same value set as he is.

Secondly, the use of controversy is a sure-fire tactic to get attention for a limited amount of time.  However, it will pass on and I think in a month or two we won’t be talking about it anymore.  It’s simply a stunt.   Thirdly, the thing about blogging is that there is an implied trust in the readership that I think is exploited by a great many of us.  We do not realise that people believe first then analyse later.  There is tremendous power in this concept and it’s worth writing down!  Because of this I think more care needs to be taken about the authority and quality of information provided.  These communities are self-regulating which is both a problem and a curse.  Those that hunger after the dollar will group together.   That information is based on a set of values that override others and so on.   Lastly, if there is any integrity in our blogging it should be evident in what we post.  What’s our motivation?  Money or people?  If it’s money the readers should be able to see that and then make a value judgement for themselves.  If they can’t then I think a subtle form of manipulation is going on.   That, is not good for bloggers and it’s not good for our readers.

In closing I would like to say that the John Cow stunt is something which I thought was clever but I wouldn’t do something like that myself.   Why not?  Personally, I don’t think it was very clear to the readers of his blog that he was joking.  This got me thinking that perhaps we need more integrity in our blogging.  I think this is the case because even though this was just a marketing ploy… people really believed he was hacked!  It did however get me talking about it (which isn’t saying that much!) and thinking why do we fall for things like this?  On the one hand I admire the clever ploy yet on the other I am thinking well isn’t that deceptive? Either way, I still think we need to have more integrity in our blogs and be more upfront about what we are setting out to achieve.

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