Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Wanna be in the top 1% of your online peers?  Comment on someone’s blog today (you’re welcome to start here, in fact). 

According to a recent article by Jakob Nielsen on the AlertBox site, most people who go online merely lurk.  Only 9% of people actively comment once in awhile on people’s blogs (they purportedly let other priorities rule), and only 1% will comment or write something online daily. 

I found it interesting that Wikipedia defined subcultures of the 90% of the world who lurk rather than participate directly in the conversations online:

1. Malevolent Lurkers:  Those who complain to moderators about being offended by others’ comments, but don’t participate in conversations directly.  JJ: Get a spine. Stand up for yourself!
2. Benign Lurkers:  Those who enjoy reading blogs, and will more likely send you an email commenting on your post than commenting openly.  JJ: Hi shy one - try a pseudonym and see how it feels to be open…
3. Constructive Lurkers:  These experienced participants have been through enough that they’ll only comment when the dialogue takes a novel turn - then they’re likely to write a novel - length comment.  JJ: Bring it on!
4. Smart-ass Lurkers:  Those who’ll watch a discussion take place and only tweak the participants with comments when they can ‘heat’ the conversations substantially.  JJ: Assholes are like opinions, everybody’s got one.  Or is that the other way around?

Are you a commenter or a lurker?  If so, what kind? 

We are in Seattle this weekend, and this morning went to the Bodies… The Exhibition here.  It was quite amazing.  I had seen billboards for it in New York, right before it opened there, and remember the cautionary and ethical concerns around it.  So it was a treat to be able to finally see it.

After all, they were showing real human bodies, exposed to the nerves. 

Carefully preserved in polymer, the bodies are largely from a medical school in China, although many of the organ specimens have been collected from here in the US as well.

I think the most impressive part of the exhibit, to me, were acutally the exposed nerves.  Laid out perfectly on white, they looked absolutely frantic.  Sincerely, they looked like they were buzzing right there on the table.  The phrase frayed nerves couldn’t be more apropos.

We both noted we were surprised that nothing in the exhibit grossed either of us out.  (I can’t watch surgery or anything bloody on TV without shutting my eyes.)  I guess we were clinical in our approach - viewing it as an intricate study of what’s going on inside - just underneath the skin. 

There were several cases of cancerous organs, blackened and tuberculous lungs, and the tiniest of organs (your appendix is smaller than your little finger) and glands (the pituitary was the size of a hazelnut). The cautionary tales on signage paled in comparison to viewing the actual results of disease and intentional distruction.  I mean, who would smoke, knowing each pack takes 2.5 hours of your life away?

We spent two and a half hours taking it in.  And it was well worth the time and energy to see it all.  I can’t believe we’ve lived so long without seeing the inner workings of our physical bodies.  It’s actually more fantastic than I’d ever be able to imagine.

Breaking news (via KGW) out of southern Oregon today that James Kim was found dead in the wilderness.  I’m so sad to hear it.  I found out about the fact that his entire family had gone missing over the  Thanksgiving weekend by reading Robert Scoble’s blog post about it.  I found it amazing that was the first I’d heard of it (I live in Oregon after all) and Robert was writing about it from London.

We all mourn the loss of this brave father who left his car (and wife and two little girls - who miraculously survived) to go find help for his family.

We are all connected.  Our thoughts are with his family and friends around the globe.

I get asked all the time - what makes a good blogger?  I take the ability to sit down and write a blog - without exactly agonizing over every word - for granted now. 

(Maybe my readers would prefer that I would think more about my posts, or at least try to be more scintillating in my observations and topics… but blogging is still a treasured act for me.)

So:  what makes a good blogger?

• Tell me a story…  entertain me somehow with something memorable about yourself, your experiences, your life.  It doesn’t have to be a tome, just a little tale.
• Write as if you’re emailing a friend.  Be familiar, because your words will flow more easily.  You’re likely to be more relaxed when you email than when you blog, so write an email instead of a blog post - it’s just a matter of application at that point. 
• Push yourself to be authentic and (gulp) a little transparent about your life.  You don’t have to tell your readers things you don’t want them to know; but take some risks.  Share a little something about your feelings.  People want to read about people that they might not be able to find out about in their everyday lives. 

For example, few who know me professionally would have a clue that I adore toast above all foods, with tapioca pudding a very close second.  And only my love knows how much jam I put on toast when I have it, or that I could eat an entire tub of tapioca without an off-switch.

And few of my friends would know that I never spend more than $5 on lunch as a matter of principle during the week. 

Tell us your story. Help us care about you - it’s much more likely we’ll care more about what you write.