Ariannna Huffington, the renowned blogger and founder of the Huffington Post, who once campaigned against the Terminator for Governor of California, appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last Wednesday to talk about cheese, blogging, and the new Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging book.
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Huffington notes that 50,000 blogs are started every day at which point Stewart notes that the statistic sounds like that of a sexually transmitted disease. But she says blogging is a lot more fun.
“Write about yourpassion. Love your passion,” says Huffington, when asked about what the “trick” is to blogging. She says to write about your obvious passion and your secret passion. “My obvious passion is poliitcs,” she says before Stewart makes a joke about secret eggplant passions at which point Huffington reveals that she has a passion for cheese. She then provides an example of when she really did write about cheese.
The conversation that Huffington has with Stewart kind of backs up my point about how you have to care about what you’re doing when you’re blogging and using social media. You can’t just talk about your product and advertise. You have to get involved and get personal. In other words, you have to be a human, not an ad. Huffington understands this and that is one reason why the Huffington Post is as successful as it is, and she is on national television talking about blogging.
She can freely talk about things like cheese on her blog, and it makes the readers feel like they are reading something written by their friend, and that is something that people can connect to. She’s letting her personality through. It can also elevate the entertainment value of a publication. She likens blogging to emailing a friend in terms of tone as Stewart tries to grasp what blogging is really about. Huffington also refers to blogging as a “rough draft of history,” presumably in the context of news-related topics.
She talks about the spectrum of blogging from the type of blogging from the Huffington Post does about news to people just blogging about more trivial things. She also talks about a series the Huffington Post launched calling on readers to blog the economic crisis, called “Blog the Meltdown.”
“You lost a job? You have time to blog,” exclaims Huffington.
Huffington then continues to try to explain to Stewart what blogging is really about and tells him that he doesn’t understand it, which is funny in itself, most likely true for a lot of other people as well. “Blogging is not about perfectionism. Blogging is about intamacy, immediacy, transparency, and sharing your thoughts the way you share them with a friend,” she tells him.
I think that sums it up pretty nicely, and is a statement that businesses should consider when they set out to do their own blogging. If you keep this frame of mind in your writing, and in your social media efforts altogether, you have a better shot at really getting through to the audience that you are after.
