My name is Andrew Feldstein and I met Evelyn a week ago Thursday at the Blog Business Summit. I had had a very exciting “intro to blogging” from Dave Taylor the day before, but Thursday was the official beginning of the conference and Evelyn’s session was the first official session. "Staying On Top of the Buzz: Blog Monitoring Tools and Techniques" could have been anything really, but the last thing I expected was to hear a thoughtful and thought provoking talk that subtly minimized the concept of “monitoring” itself.
Evelyn drew a very clear distinction between “monitoring” and “listening”. It is the kind of distinction made by those for whom the differences are meaningful. Listening is personal. Listening is involved and involving. Monitoring is impersonal. Monitoring is gathering and taking away. More of what she and others said at the summit has been recounted elsewhere but this is what attracted my attention. After the session I went up, introduced myself, and told her why I was there and what I was doing. She invited me to share the ongoing process on this blog. This is the short version.
I started with an e-commerce site called alotlikeChristmas.com. It is there to look at but it is in the midst of a redesign and everything is taking longer than I had anticipated. As I started exploring different ways to promote my site I quickly came to realize that I needed to make content an integral part of the project. There is even a heading in the business plan entitled “Content is King”.
I came up with the idea of creating, what I began referring to as a "hybrid Christmas magazine/weblog". I envisioned an exciting, interesting, comprehensive source for all things Christmas. We’d feature recipes and movies and books and travel destinations and lore and traditions and inspirational stories and, yeah I know, lots of people do that. But I want this to be a place for sharing and discovery and out of the ordinary. I hope people will visit and find out something they didn’t know but are glad to find out. I hope people will share things that we don’t know and are glad to discover.
Initially I was going to have this magblog ? blogmag? as an entity independent from the commerce site but that didn't make sense. So the idea is to combine content with commerce. Right now there isn’t much happening as I struggle with layout and design. I was hoping to have the site presentable for a “Christmas in July” launching but the process has been a lot more complicated than I thought it was going to be. So many choices! So many promising directions! So many dead ends!
Anyway, I want this "magblog" to be interactive. This is where Evelyn’s ideas began to resonate. I don’t want to just talk at people. I want to participate in conversations and listen to stories. One aspect of this idea is a separate blog for those in my kid’s generation. At the risk of dating myself my son is 18 and my daughter is 24 and when it comes to Christmas, I’m not hearing their “voice” out there. Yes, I’m certainly hearing people talking to and about Generation Y. But they generally are trying to describe them or sell them something. I want to give my children, their friends and peers an open forum to express there thoughts and ideas.
So the first question is how to create a forum that people will want to participate in. How do you create a balance between providing valuable content and having a welcoming environment where folks will want to come to share and be a part of the community?
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