If you write a blog and no one visits is it still a blog? For Mack Collier the fun and joy of blogging is building community. But his vision is even bigger. His goal is for marketers to embrace, join, and empower their communities. As the Fonz would say, "Aayy..Cooool!"
Blogger Story Teller: Mack Collier, The Viral Garden
When I first started blogging last September with Beyond Madison Avenue (a blog focusing on advertising and marketing news and opinion), I knew nothing about blogs, and looked at blogging as a way to help in my job search. I quickly realized what every other blogger knows, that blogging is incredibly addictive!
Of course, I also quickly realized that blogging wasn't much fun if you were just blogging to yourself! So in an effort to figure out how other blogs were getting all the comments that BMA wasn't, I started visiting and commenting on other blogs.
Soon after, an amazing thing began to happen: The bloggers from the blogs where I had been commenting started coming back to BMA and commenting there! Shocking! Over time, BMA developed a core group of bloggers that visited BMA and commented almost every day. I quickly realized that BMA was morphing from being a blog to a community that we were sharing with our readers. I made a point to focus on our frequent commenters, and to encourage our readers to visit their blogs, as I did.
In late March, I decided to start my own blog, focusing strictly on marketing issues. That blog would become The Viral Garden - The place Beyond Madison Avenue where marketing ideas grow and spread. I have been EXTREMELY fortunate that most of the frequent readers of BMA have made the trip over to The Viral Garden, and at the same time, I have been lucky enough to be exposed to a completely new group of amazing bloggers such as yourself!
Perhaps the main idea that I keep blogging (ranting?) about on TVG is the need for marketers to embrace, join, and empower their communities. I can stand behind the effectiveness of these ideas because they are put into practice every single day at The Viral Garden. To those that are skeptical of the potential benefits, all you have to do is look at BMA and The Viral Garden, any success we've had, or will have, is a direct result of our growing community. At some point you have to let go and trust in your community to take you where you need to be.
That idea might scare some marketers, but I wouldn't have it any other way!
Technorati Tags: Blogger_Stories, Mack_Collier, Community, Business_Blogs, Beyond_Madison_Ave, The_Virtual_Garden
Comments