This picture is reasonably beautiful street art. I like it because the artist put some time and effort into it. Sure, it’s just a tag, but it’s also something that you know she or he worked to design and perfect. Several notebook pages went into making this look just right before the Krylon hit the cinder blocks.

Graffiti is often overlooked, and in that sense, it’s kind of like blogging. A great big chunk of society looks at blogging almost the same way many look at graffiti: oh, that’s that thing some people do. It’s all about themselves. It’s all just a bunch of chatter.…

After winning Game 5 in the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals against the Miami Heat, the Boston Celtics power forward Kevin Garnett was asked what kept him going, after 17 years in the NBA. He said that he wanted to show people that he was a true professional and that he took pride in the practice of his craft. It resonated with me, especially because today, I’m at BlogWorld Expo in New York City, where I’m giving a talk about what I’ve learned after 14 years of blogging. I would say that what I’ve learned and what I continue to do in this space has everything to do with the hard work of practicing a craft.…

Thanks to Jason Falls, I just read this post about how many marketing agencies are closing down their blogs and tweeting and Facebooking instead.

“Nobody reads agency blogs, and there are so many out there it’s impossible for people to keep up anyway,” said Sam Weston, director of communications at digital agency Huge.

Nobody Reads ANY Blogs- If They’re Boring

I’ll tell you without even having to look why nobody reads a blog: because it’s boring. Because it’s poorly written. Because it’s utterly self-referential.

Nobody has time to read junk.…

I’ve been asked by subscribers of my personal newsletter how I decide what goes on my blog and what goes into my newsletter. I think the answer differs depending on your strategy, but I’m more than happy to tell you how I view it. I put information that sells on my blog, and information that nurtures in my newsletter.

Information that Sells

My job, because people seem confused these days as to what exactly it is I do or am selling, is to help mid-sized to larger companies build business (revenue and growth) by improving their use of the human digital channel (social media, email marketing, mobile marketing, content marketing, and other business applications).…

I’m a Mitch Joel fan. I’ve also been lucky to have dinner and then breakfast with him over these few days. I’m now watching him blog. It’s fascinating. Mitch is such a smarter writer than me, such a better, more thoughtful blogger. You know, Mitch has a huge past in music journalism. He was a BIG TIME journalist back in the day. And maybe that’s what I’m seeing.

When I watch Mitch blog, what I see is someone who can synthesize other materials around his core idea. Right now, he’s writing about ideas. In a way, I’m scooping him with this blog post because I’ll publish mine much faster than Mitch will publish his.…

Going into 2012, I’m thinking that we are very responsible to consider what we publish and curate as media channels, should attention, platform-building, and better community relationships be our goal. In thinking about all your various uses of social networks, if you are working with the mindset that they are all tied together as a larger media property for yourself, it becomes important to think about what you’re putting through those channels. Attention is a currency, and if we spend too much of other people’s attention on frivolous posts and shares, we risk losing that attention.…

I’m listening to Patton Oswalt read his book (amazon affiliate link) for nerds. It’s a totally wonderful book, and his narration makes it pop up even better still. Why? Because he’s a professional actor, as well as a darned good writer. His voice for this is perfect. His reading isn’t literal to the book. He keeps adding in liner notes. Hell, Michael Stipe from REM shows up in the reading.

This comes the day after I finished reading my own new book. This comes one week after Joe and I interviewed Sean Pratt, professional audiobook reader. Sean points out in that interview that most authors can’t read their own book for crap.…

In the old Weird Al Yankovic movie, UHF (amazon affiliate link), the loose premise of the movie is that Al inherits a UHF tv channel that’s failing, and has to turn the ratings around to save the station. Soon, all kinds of strange shows come into existence, such as “Wheel of Fish,” a game show where you compete to win various fish (red snapper. Very tasty!). Their winning hit is a children’s show run by Stanley Spudowski, the station’s janitor (played by a pre-racist Michael Richards), with bits like letting kids drink from a fire hose.

It dawns on me that we are a world of fledgling tv stations.…