Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth)

[fr]

[en]

I gave this interview to the Serbian magazine InfoM about a month ago, for their December issue. I thought you might be interested in hearing what answers I gave to their questions.

1) What do you think about serbia and serbian bloggers?

Honestly, I haven’t seen much of Serbia or Serbian bloggers, besides what I saw at BlogOpen. The people I met were nice. It seems to me – from the outside, but as I don’t understand a word of Serbian, this has to be taken with a grain of salt — that blogging in Serbia is only beginning to make itself known. For example, the whole “journalists vs. bloggers” debate seems very old to me.

2) What needs to be done to make this kind of communication more popular?

More people need to blog

3) What is your opinion on recent comments that bloggers are not “serious” journalist?

It’s an old and tired debate. Being a journalist is a profession, particularly if you think of high-quality investigative journalism. Not all bloggers are interested in news or commentary on the world, so what they do has not much to do with journalism. For the bloggers who do, however, comment on the news or even break it, they are doing a job similar to that of journalists, though they often aren’t being paid.

More and more, people are turning to blogs as their primary news source — if “journalism” is just the re-hashing of press releases, then yes, journalism is right to be “afraid” of blogging. Serious investigative journalism will not disappear, but superficial or manipulative journalism is directly challenged by the work of some bloggers — and I think this is a good thing.

4) What is commercial potential of blogging in small countries like Serbia?

I think it’s like everywhere else: people won’t make money “with” blogs, but “because” of blogs. Freelancers can use a blog to demonstrate their expertise, whether they live in a large or small country does not change anything to that. Companies can use blogs to engage differently with their customers and users. They can use blogs internally to build new relationships with their employees.

5) Could you give me definition (and example) of successful blog?

A successful blog is a blog that has an influence, in a very general way. People write blogs for different reasons, so their measure of success will vary. If I want to connect with other people who have the same interests as me, my blog will be successful if it allows me to do so.

Things like counting comments, visitors, incoming links are in my opinion very superficial (and sometimes dangerous) ways of measuring how successful a blog is.

Blogging is about opening conversations, and building relationships. How do you measure that?

6) What is blog consulting and where emerged the need for this kind of experts from?

Blogging (and the rest of social media) is a new media. Not everybody understands its characteristics — actually, only a rather small number of people really do. A social media consultant like myself steps in when there is a need for specialised knowledge about blogging or other social media.

For example, if you have a company, and you’re wondering “how could I use blogging in my company?” or “what are the advantages of blogging for somebody in my situation?” or even “I want to start blogging, but how do I do it?” — that is where a social media or blogging consultant will be able to help you.

7) Where bloggers want to see themselves? Is blogging just the road to the goal or goal itself?

One important aspect of blogging is passion. You need to be passionate about the things you’re blogging about. In that respect, blogging is the goal. You’re passionate about something, and you want to share it.

But blogging is also a means to an end. However, if it is done /only/ as a means to an end, without real, authentic passion, it will fail.