When the Don of the Central Iowa Blogga Nostra asks you to do something – you oblige. So here is my addition to the conversation Liz Strauss started on blogging as a metaphor.
For me, baseball is life. Steve Rubel once compared blogging to baseball when he said:
Baseball is a good metaphor here. A blog link/mention combo is like a home run – a four bagger. You get attention, Google Juice, traffic and branding. Blog links without mentions and plain old mentions are like doubles because in either case you get two out of these four bases.
Ahh, but what about RSS? RSS is opt-in and it’s attention. What if you score a blog link/mention combo in a popular feed you know has a high degree of attention among your target audience? Then we’re talking about a Grand Slam, right?
Although we probably hate to admit it most bloggers are really singles hitters. Bloggers who make contact with their audience on a day-by-day basis rather than the big splash of the home run. No, its not always glamorous or pretty. But in a game where the home run hitters receive all the attention it is often the singles hitters that provide the all-important margin of victory.
In other words, blogging is a whole lot more like Tony Gwynn than it is Barry Bonds. So hit singles and you just might end up in the Hall of Fame.
Photo on Flickr by Scott Ableman.