Little Red Suit

Recently, Seth Godin invited the world to blog. He asks everyone to join the conversation – at least once – and points out that while there are tons of blogs out there on a zillion topics (to me, it seems most focus, ironically, on blogging itself), most people in the world don’t blog, and perhaps they should, even if ever-so-smally. I agree with him. We should all blog. I’ve been blogging for about four years, much more time than tons of prominent bloggers out there. But chances are, you’ve never heard of me. Here’s why:

My passion for blogging has taken me to the extent that my own ambitions are too divided, and I have a few too many blogs. I agree with Seth too much. I’d love to be on this list of the world’s top 150 marketing blogs - or at the top of it like Mr. Godin. But I’m not. Here’s what my adventures in blogging have gotten me so far:

• My first, personal blog to make new internet pals and learn the blogging ropes.

• MySpage page blog to keep up with old friends.

• Littleredsuit (at WordPress) to further conversations on my thesis topic and build contacts in the professional world.

• Pop culture blog (at WordPress) to talk about pop culture and other interests.

• USA Today profile blog – for the heck of it.

• Virb blog – because I think Virb is a great site and more people should use it.

• A total of two or three regular readers in all.

The problem with this is that the desire to diversity my blogging points of contact is not, in fact, helping my efforts. It’s hurting them. Instead of being able to invest a good 30 minutes an evening in writing an excellent blog post, I’m stuck having to troll around all these various sites, write a post every other week to each of them, and try to maintain relationships with various readers on various platforms.

Another thing is, I have a different personality, screen name or user name at each of these sites. I, unlike Seth, don’t have the sort of web credibility where I can presume to call myself “Tiffany” and generate much out of that than a few spam comments at my not-so-prominent-yet blog. I know I’m not alone in this plight.

The typical answer to this type of newb-typical complaint would be to simply use my full name on all my blogs and to link them to one another and promote the heck out of them. This would be the right answer. And, and would honestly love to do just that. But as a female blogger, stories of other prominent women in the blogging world being personally attacked and stalked in the regular-osphere make me balk a bit at the idea. Add that to the fact that when you Google my full name, you get 100% me, and you can see why I might have a bit of pause at making a full emergence into the blogging world. Companies would kill for the name SEO I have for my own personal brand, so it’s a good thing and a bad thing if you ask me (until I get married and there’s the whole hypenate or not issue, which is another post for another time). I think total transparency is great, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t really want a creepy stalker forcing me off the web and out of my home because they can find where I live. I’m not in it for that kind of – “fame.”

So . . . what’s a girl to do? Is it simply an irrational fear that’s holding me back, or is it actually a good thing to be a little-known-blogger in it for mainly the experience itself? Where should I go from here? Where do any of us go with this? I wonder what Seth would say to those questions.