Sean D. Francis

Leo Laporte Learns a Blogging Lesson

Posted on 23 August 2010

In a world where social media appeared to be king, it turned out to only be a pretender-to-the-throne. Content is still king and content needs to be cared for in a protected environment. Blogs are still an essential part of the conversation on the Internet.

Consider what happened to Leo Laporte. He had been using Google Buzz as his social media tool, shooting out pictures, links, and random thoughts as all of us tend to do. Only recently did he realize that Buzz stopped working for him on August 6. Everything he had been putting into Buzz wasn’t going out publicly and no one noticed – not even him. After making the discovery he made the following comment on his blog – Leoville:

I should have been posting it [on my blog] all along. Had I been doing so I’d have something to show for it. A record of my life for the last few years at the very least. But I ignored my blog and ran off with the sexy, shiny microblogs. Well no more. I’m sorry for having neglected you Leoville. From now on when I post a picture of a particularly delicious sandwich I’m posting it here. When I complain that Sookie is back with Bill, you’ll hear it here first. And the show notes for my shows will go here, too.

Part of that feels tongue-in-cheek but the sentiment is valid. Twitter, Buzz, and Facebook status updates aren’t blogs. Even if they get called microblogs, they aren’t. They are ways to curate content, to guide people to the good places on the Internet and to share ‘throwaway’ thoughts. Content is sill the king and it deserves a suitable throne.

Blog on, Leo, blog on! The rest of us can learn the lesson as well. What are we doing with social media? Are we using it to communicate and open a dialog? Are we using it as a personal firehose of random thoughts, links, and pictures? Are we engaging audiences, clients, and customers, or just shouting into the night? If you were to stop using Twitter, Buzz, Facebook would you notice? Would your traffic to your site suffer? Would you get fewer clients?