PR and Blogs and Integrity and Passion

Edelman’s A List Blogger Extraordinaire (at least in my book), Phil Gomes rants about why he Hates the “A-List” Mentality.  For those of us in PR who also blog, there’s a very interesting dynamic that occurs as we try to balance meeting professional objectives with personal objectives.  In some cases, there’s even a battle between blogging about our products, and blogging about our passions.  In many cases, they’re the same thing (I love gaming), but often, they’re not. 

This blog started as an effort to reach out to customers, so I could learn more about what makes them tick (so I could be a better marketer).  It quickly turned into a way for me to explore some ideas I was struggling with personally, namely management dynamics and the culture of Microsoft (though I was never as openly controversial as Mini-Microsoft!).  As the blog evolved, I began writing a bit about online marketing, and the dynamic of customer evangelism. 

As my job became more PR focused, I found myself writing about the products I represented (Xbox and Halo 2, for example), but because it just didn’t feel genuine to the flavor of the blog, I quit posting regularly, and took a year or so off.  All the while, I was having conversations internally about how blogging and community would help us with our marketing goals. 

About four months ago, I was “officially” given the job of developing our online community team for Xbox and Games for Windows.  I worked with Edelman (including Phil Gomes) as we began to define our online program.  As I began recruiting someone to manage the community program, I began to blog regularly about Xbox and the industry to show everyone what could be done with a blog.  And my personal blog evolved to be nearly 100% about Xbox. 

After a few months, we were ready to unveil our team blog (hosted on msdn.com), and I got the guys on my team to help with some posts.  When we finalized getting a unique URL (gamerscoreblog.com), I made the last “Xbox product” post to my personal blog.  And it sits there until today. 

Every now and then, someone will send an email to ask if I am going to return to posting about Microsoft culture, management best practice, even my kids/family.  Trouble is, with 2-3 posts a day expected on the team blog, the personal blog quickly becomes a luxury. 

Problem with two blogs is that I am a gamer, and the industry/news/product info is important to me personally, but the other passions haven’t gone away.  I miss the community I built on my personal site, the conversations I had, and the topics I explored.  I need to take time to re-ignite my passion about non-Xbox issues (in addition to continuing the Xbox team blog).

Phil brings up a related point in his post:

So, hear it from Mr. Technorati-Rank #19,520:

The day you start caring more than two squirts of whizz about your ranking or A-list status is the day you have lost control of your blog — and, with it, your online identity — since that desire to achieve and maintain status will inevitably color what you write and how you write it!!!

But, is who you are and what you write about — your credibility — worth changing in order to achieve this? Because that's what is at stake if you ever think to yourself "I believe [X], but I'll be less popular if I write it. The best thing to do is [Y], but people will hate me and I'll never be an A-lister EVER!!!" 

My personal blog would get 500 hits a day fairly consistently, and I remember the days getting a link from Scoble or even my biz-hero Tom Peters, when I’d get 1,000 hits, maybe 2,000.  But I noticed when I’d write about Halo 2 (before its launch), that number’d creep up to 2,000 or more.  And I’d experiment with news stories that I thought would gather more hits.  And when I did that, I’d write a post that I didn’t care passionately about. 
Now our new blog, even in its infancy, is getting several thousand hits a day, but for those that have been along since this blog started back in 2003, you’re not hearing a whole lot of my “voice” in the news I post on the other site. 

Good news for me (at least) is that the more I’m involved in my (relatively) new job in PR, the more I’m passionate about the “PR stuff” I write about.  So I hope it’s going to result in goodness all around.  But Phil reminds me to be true to “my blog,” so I’ll try to write more about the evolving field of PR, and how online is changing everything.  Ought to be interesting (heck, at least to me).  Take it from Mr. Technorati-Rank 25,777 (hey, that’s not so bad!).

In the meantime, if you want to hear secrets about Halo 3, check out the “other blog.”