Blogging: Guy Kawasaki on Being Interesting
I save tons of information that I get throughout the day because I want to find something interesting to write about here. That's not always easy, and looking for that gem that I'd like to relate is often like digging through sawdust for coins. You did that when you were a kid, right? Someone always has a sawdust pile at a family picnic or a community function. I remember that being my favorite part.
Is it any wonder that I'm a kick- ass researcher? That's why I loved writing books so much. The research, and all that I'd learn by doing it, was a total turn on. Almost as good as sex — almost.
I could find just the right factoids that nobody else knew or wrote about before and I'd make sure that those little gems were sprinkled throughout the book. Those were the little truths that really turned me on, and the little secrets that made people go, "Wow! I didn't know that!"
For instance, in my biography of Gandhi, I talk about women outside his marriage, who seemed to be more than just followers. I won't go into the details, but Gandhi was to have taken the vow of Brahmacharya, which has to do with abstinence and celibacy. Some people would never believe that Gandhi wasn't necessarily as saintly as he is usually portrayed… His outside relationships were certainly emotionally charged, if not physically. The idea that Gandhi may not have kept his vow is controversial. I've been asked about that by journalists more than once, in London and Australia, and I have always stated that I'm not convinced that Gandhi was anything but human. Great man, but still human. Anyway…
What did I find today while searching through tons and tons of information to get that one little gem that might help you in your business?
A single line by Guy Kawasaki (of AllTop.com) in an interview he did with Fast Company ("Guy Kawasaki on Twitter Brawls, Authenticity, and How He Plans to Win The Influence Project," by Mark Borden, July 9, 2010). It reads:
"If you’re not pissing people off, you're not doing anything interesting."
Bingo! If you're not giving people anything to think about, anything that just riles them up, for better or worse, why bother?
Glenn Beck is a champion of that. He's on Fox News every day, giving people tons of stuff to think about, no matter what side of the Obama coin they're on. Actually newscasters all over the planet do that every day. (Glenn is just focused on one thing — taking back the country.) Think about all the gloom and doom the talking heads predict, the "what if"s of current events. Because of them, people aren't vacationing in Florida. There could be tar balls! There aren't. The beaches are as pristine as ever, and well… the oil isn't near us yet. In fact, it may NEVER arrive! Nobody knows for sure.
But what if you used that tactic in your blog? What if you just wrote about something so outrageous every day that people had to come back to read what you're going to think up next?
That's EXACTLY what you want to do!
If you tell them the sky is falling, they will come. If you tell them that you hate Obama, they will come. If you tell them that 99% of what people learn online is bullshit, will they come?
They should.
Be a little more ferocious, a bit more heddy and devil-may-care. Be honest. Don't be negative all the time, but say what you feel, not what you think you should say or what you think you need to say to make money. That way lies boredom and zero visitors.
Stay tuned. I feel more rants and bullshit calling coming on.
How does that make you feel?
