Thanks to "Blog," I Now Know That I'm Nothing More Than A Piece of Tail

My little blog Cheat Seeking Missiles has attracted a little over 12,000 hits since I birthed it in October last year so I could submit a post to Hugh's pre-election Vox Blogli question on why Bush, why not Kerry.

I'm grateful as all get-out to all of you who stop by, I really, truly am. You provide me with the spark I need to think a little longer about what concerns me, to read a lot more than I would without you, and to do some really enjoyable writing.

But let's face it, you guys and I combine to make CSM nothing more than a piece of the tail -- that vast collection of millions of blogs that tail off toward infinity on the chart that tracks blog hits. The big guys get tens of thousands of hits daily; we on the tail get a few dozen, maybe a hundred on a good day. Instapundit I'm not.

In his book Blog, Hugh explains the tail, from an interview with the man who recognized it first: David Sifry of Technorati:

But there is a huge, huge audience out among the tail. If a point of view or product makes its way throughout most of the blogs in the tail, the audience for that point of view or product will far outstrip even the largest audience for the biggest blogs. Because visitors to these low-traffic blogs are attached to them for some reason -- friends, families, coworkers -- the impact of the commentary will be far higher than if a stranger visits, say, Infinite Monkeys on a link lark. Further, repeat visitors are signaling trust via their investment of time. If the tail picks up a meme, the spread of that meme will be instantaneous and is likely to be believed by the audience unique to the low- or moderate-traffic blogs.

Well, that's a nice thought, but still, the fact that I'm just a piece of the tail was perhaps the least pleasant thing I learned in reading Hugh's groundbreaking book.

The rest was pleasant indeed. After 29 years in PR, I tend to throw around superlatives, but in this case, "groundbreaking" fits. If you look at the search results for "blog" at Amazon, you'll find a few technical books of the Blogs for Dummies ilk listed below Hugh's book. He's the only one who's thinking about the "why" and "what if" of blogs, not the "how" of blogs.

Perhaps the most important ground Hugh breaks in Blog is in getting Joe Corporate to get interested in the blog concept, then dream about it. The book lays out like many business strategy books of the Crush the Competition sort: A few real-life zingers in the first chapter, followed by -- how appropriate is this for Hugh? -- a chapter on the history. In this case, it's the history of the Reformation and how it relates to blogging. Then some theory, then some application.

Hugh sees the vital importance of hitting non-bloggers, especially business leaders, with the vision of the potential of blogging. Some may disagree, fearing commercialization of the blogosphere, but it's too late to avoid that ... it's already commercialized. There's too much potential in blogging, so the commercialization that infested the internet will quickly infest the blogosphere. But it's a big sphere, and there's room for all of us -- we'll just have to watch out for Armstrong-Williams-ization.

As I read the book, I made notes, I underlined, I jotted ... and most important of all, on January 16 I accomplished what I thought would be a very difficult resolution for this year. I started dreaming about potential new futures! Thanks to Blog, there's a business plan brewing in my head.

It's part of that rare and marvellous "what if" thinking that Hugh infused into the book, and if you're game, Blog is the book for you.