The Greatest Bloggers
GapingVoid asked uber-marketing guru Seth Godin to write a manifesto. He did so with a list of 10 in his normal iconoclastic, guerilla marketing stlye. My eye caught one of them:

4. The greatest bloggers blog for their readers, not for themselves.

Which is why I'm not one of the greatest bloggers, I guess. From a marketing perspective he's right on target, of course. In this field, unlike in others where advertising can play a role, word of mouth, Google searches and the like determine whether a blog is going to pull in loads of hits or not unlike ads where you can at least convince people to come and see what you have to offer.

But I wonder if most bloggers, except perhaps those who are professional journalists and writers, start by wondering what their readers want? It is an interesting question. But like so many other similar issues, there's a lot more to becoming "great" or "successful" than just giving the readers what they want.

One more of his top ten was also interesting:

10. Mass taste is rarely good taste.

Which made me think of something that uber-blogger Jeff Jarvis posted back in June:

Irony defined:

When TV was a mass medium, it was tacky. See Beverly Hillbillies.

Then TV became more targeted and it got way better. See Hill St. Blues and successors.

Now that TV is shrinking, it is getting tackier and tackier. See Master of Champions. This isn’t reality. It’s cheap beer.