The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
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: Annette Wachowski has a nice take on weblogs: They are a “self-marketing instrument.”
How true. Tim Blair told me that his blog feeds his freelance career. Denton’s bloggers have marketed themselves well via his vehicles. Reynolds is a star thanks to his blog. I’m trying to make myself into the new old media guy with this one. Yup, we’re all just our own flacks. (via Martin Roell. Sorry, it’s in German.)
Nothing wrong with flacking. David Olgivy referred to it as “putting your best foot forward”. Besides, how come it’s OK for our cultural elites to self-promote- celebrities, captains of industry, millioniare entrepreneurs, artists, autors, rock stars, political leaders etc- but not regular folks like us? How dare we try to slip past the velvet rope without first recieving an invite from the Cultural Validation Committee!The nerve!!
My blog gets me lots of business, as well. My day-job is a copywriter. Normally copywriters have this thing called a “book”, which is a black vinyl portfolio containing examples of all their best work in it.
Go into any Creative Director’s office on Madison Avenue and you’ll see a pile of black vinyl books in the corner, sent in by headhunters, all trying to get the CD’s eye.
Anyway, after a while I decided that trying to get a job by schlepping one’s book around town was a slow, painful and and basically ineffective way of doing it. So I set up my website instead.
Most Creative Directors I know say it works far better than most books they’ve seen recently.
That being said, I think self-promo blogging only work if you have something to say besides “Me me me me me…”
You may be using Buzzmachine to fiendishly promote your own career, Jeff. Frankly, I have no problem with that. At the end of the day, you’ve got some wonderfully sharp ideas here, and that’s why people come.