#49 / Don't Start A Blog!

Gina Bianchini has some advice for anyone who might be thinking about starting a blog in 2018: Don't! Bianchini is an "influencer" on LinkedIn, which is a professional networking site.  She is also the CEO of Mighty Networks, "where creators can build a community and get paid."

In other words, here is Bianchini's thought: Don't start a blog (that is so 2010). Bring your business to Bianchini and you'll reap great rewards.

Crunchbase, which advertises itself as a place to "discover innovative companies and the people behind them," promotes Mighty Networks as follows: "Mighty Networks is the fastest way to create and grow a community-powered brand." In fact, that description sounds a lot like what Bianchini says in her advisory about blogs. I wouldn't be surprised if she wrote that description herself.

Bianchini's advice is directed to a certain category of blogger. A category limited to those who want to make money with their blog. Here is how Bianchini starts off her LinkedIn discussion:

Ah...a new year is upon us, and with it, resolutions like polishing up your website or finally starting that blog. 

Whatever you do, don’t start that blog. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are many wonderful reasons to start a blog. There’s the promise of making money (just Google the phrase “how to make money blogging” to see what I’m talking about), but there’s also self-expression, organizing your ideas, building a “community,” and, obviously, content marketing. 

But the world has changed. What was once the best way to start a website around a unique idea, interest, or take on the world in a few minutes for free just can’t compete with our new realities. Starting a blog is like bringing a knife to a gunfight––you simply can’t compete in 2018. 

Now, I may seem like a blog hater at this point, but I’m not. Rather, I’m someone who has dedicated the past decade to creating powerful products for entrepreneurs and online businesses to succeed—controlling their own destiny along the way.

In you are an entrepreneur trying to make an online business succeed, then the services that Bianchini offers are probably just right. She wants you to start an "interest network," which just turns out to be a "Mighty Network." 

If what you care about is making money, and "building a brand," Bianchini's advice is probably good. 

Though I made postings to my beginner's blog in 2009, I actually started my daily postings in 2010, the very year that Bianchini identifies as a symbol of what is out of date and out of touch.

I don't object to Bianchini's advice. I am not, in fact, trying to "build a brand." I care about politics, and especially about helping to create a "healthy politics," the kind of politics anchored in genuine self-government, a politics that so inspired Santa Cruz County residents during the 1970s and 1980s. 

The kind of politics I favor does not come from "building a brand." What happens when politics starts being about "brands" is now visible at the highest levels of our national government. 

You know who I mean.

I don't like brand-based politics. And I'm sticking with my blog!

Image Credit:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/starting-blog-2018-dont-gina-bianchini/