Tending to your Global MicroBrand

I got into blogging in 2003, at the bottom of the dot-com bust. I had never been a writer and I am a person of few words. However, for all comparisons sake, it's been a reasonably acceptable blog. There are millions of people who start blogging and there are millions who stop blogging after their first post. I was fortunate enough to hit the writers block somewhere in possibly my hundredth post. Over time, for many, blogging has lost its novelty. I've come across many really interesting and passionate bloggers who have virtually stopped writing.

How does one re-ignite one's passion for blogging? Kathy Sierra writes about her own blogging journey. It really hit home with me when she wrote:

But one of the best effects of blogs is that--because the technology makes it so damn easy for blog authors/readers/commenters--people have a chance to share their knowledge and passion with the world, and potentially make a difference in someone's life.

Blogs let the "little guy", from a cowboy horse whisperer, or a geek who can make your life a little simpler develop a global microbrand. That means they can keep doing what they love--what they're passionate about--rather than, say, working 60 hours a week elsewhere and leaving no time for doing the things that help teach, inspire, or entertain the rest of us.

Isn't it that what we all search for? That is to have time to keep doing what we're passionate about at the same time know that in a little way that you've made a difference.

The gapingvoid ( a former new-yorker like me ) has a inspirational take on what he has coined "the Global Microbrand":

However, the Global Microbrand is sustainable. With it you are not beholden to one boss, one company, one customer, one local economy or even one industry. Your brand develops relationships in enough different places to where your permanent address becomes almost irrelavant.

There are thousands of reasons why people write blogs. But it seems to me the biggest reason that drives the bloggers I read the most is, we're all looking for our own personal global microbrand. That is the prize. That is the ticket off the treadmill. And I don't think it's a bad one to aim for.

I look back at the dot-com nuclear winter, it seemed to have passed so quickly and feels that nothing had happened in that 5 year stretch. I always had a disdain for blog entries about blogging. I had always looked at blogging as a background activity. Something done occassionaly as an escape from boredom. However, when you place it in the context of your global microbrand, it becomes a whole new ballgame.

It's high time that bloggers take greater importance to tending their own gardens¹.