The Problem with the Problogger Social Media Love-In

A few weeks ago, Darren Rowse from Problogger had a pretty cool idea:

What would happen if a famous blogger asked his readers for all of their social media profiles (for sites like Digg, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon…) and then they could all be friends

Sounds great, right?

The readers and bloggers get the opportunity to network with hundreds of other bloggers, while Darren gets a captive audience, since the unifying factor for each of these people is that they like Darren and Problogger.

So what could possibly go wrong?

Well, a few weeks later, with hundreds and hundreds of new friends:

I’m overwhelmed

and

I’ve seen no significant change in traffic

What? How could this be?! 500 interesting new people! 500 interested new fans! NO CHANGE ?!

Nope. 500 new people looking for 500 new fans.

Not everyone on there has been like this – I’ve met a few cool new people, it wasn’t exactly a failure.

However, I now have THOUSANDS of new Tweets and Shouts to sift through, and have been Stumbling all kinds of content that doesn’t interest me at all.

It’s hard to find my favorite people anymore.

In the pile of content I invited, I hardly ever see the Tweeters I like before they drop below the fold and I get more random shouts about celebrities, gizmos, gadgets, and God than I thought possible (Don’t be surprised – the first people to reach out to you with direct messages on Twitter or Digg will be preachers seeking to sell you their religious services).

I even opened a new Twitter account just to reconnect with my close friends and favorite Tweeters.

The problem with the Problogger Love-In is arbitrary friends

The inherent downside of this project is that you only share one interest with these people: making money blogging.

My “organic” friends, the ones I met because of broader shared interests or a comon blogging style or genre, delivered me diverse content that was tailored to my interests.

The Problogger Love-In delivered a tidal wave of Friend-Spam.

I broke my own social media. In my hurry to have hundreds of new friends and readers, I blocked my own streams of information. For every new blogger I’ve found that I like and will keep reading, I’ve found literally a hundred that I could dismiss in 10 seconds.

The irony is: the other bloggers did the same thing. That’s why they’re not reading mine – they mainly just wanted me to read theirs, and aren’t really interested in me either.

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A Quick Tip to Overcome Blogger’s Block!

Yikes! I’ve only been at this thing for 3 months and I got my first real case of writer’s block – or in this case, blogger’s block!

One major factor might be that I just turned in my senior thesis (a major paper for me) and after considerable difficulty.

The number one reason that I get writer’s block is the pressure to produce something of a certain quality. This was the case with my thesis, or “comps,” and it’s been the case this week with my blogging as well.

Ever since the Christmas-day tiger attack in San Francisco, I’ve gotten the senes that something was not quite right in the official story, and I’ve waited a good long time to get all the facts before I weighed in with my opinion. This was an article that I knew would be outside of the mainstream view, alledging that the boys were not traditional “victims,” per se, and I had anticipated writing it for months now.

However, after writing an article that meant so much to me, and about which I anticipated such a fuss, it’s been difficult for me to move forward onto a traditional article again.  I did a knee-jerk announement about the Earth Hour movement, which was quick and easy, but it’s taken me a long time to finally move forward and make another post.

How did I do it?

I set myself free!

One of the most valuable pieces of advice I’ve gotten in my life came from a college professor who told me “Allow yourself to fail.” This might seem contrary to the general goals of an academic pursuit, but he knew me well and he trusted that if I could just take the pressure off of myself, that I would do good work. He could see what I could not – that the pressure to succeed and perform to my own standards (which are admittedly pretty tough) was getting in the way of me doing good, natural work.

This has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn, and I certainly have not finished incorporating it yet. I still have the urge to push myself, to aspire to something greater than what comes to my mind in a given moment. However, it turns out that at any given moment, I’ve got a lot on  my mind that is valuable and that I should remember to share.

Tonight, when I sat down at the keyboard to write, it took me a couple of hours of dawdling and avoidance before I could finally bring myself to fire up the WordPress and take a crack at a blog. At first it was painful and I felt pressured, but I remember just to let myself go. I didn’t worry about a clever title, or a cool picture, or making sure to properly cite a bunch of sources – I just wrote the things that I already knew and gave the opinion that’s been sitting at the tip of my tongue now for weeks, waiting for a bit of attention. I let it all out, and while it might not be my best structured or prettiest post of all time, it’s got me back on a roll again.

I mean look, I’m writing here, aren’t I?

Sometimes, writing can be a cure for itself: if you don’t think you can write one piece well right now,  go ahead and work on another, or just start free-writing about anything . I’m not the sort of person who thinks that free-writing or stream-of-concsciousness is the key to truly authentic work (I throw most of it away.) However, it’s a great practice for getting your mind up and running, the words rolling, and to work through the kernels of some ideas that can grow into fully-formed articles later.

If you’re having writer’s block – or blogger’s block, in this case – just got for it: write anything! Get rid of your assignment or your goal, and especially any preconceived notions of what you Should Write! (capital-letters included for gravitas) Write about whatever is on your mind at that time and you’ll soon find that you can write about anything.

Don’t wait one moment longer.