Penelope Trunk Interview: SOTB 2009 - Page 2
Is blogging a viable career path?
No. Well, yes, but only for a very very small group of people. And the odds are that anyone reading this is not part of that small group.
Blogging is a way to build a personal brand and a network. If you know what you want, blogging can get it for you. But you need to want something beyond blogging.
Your company, Brazen Careerist, launched a “social networking career site for Generation Y” over the summer. Does Gen Y think about the web in a different way than older generations, and if so how does that play out through social networking and online publishing?
Gen Y thinks of networking differently than other generations. Gen Y is actually good at it and they like it.
Baby Boomers have always been very competitive because there are so many of them. They don't like sharing, helping, or following. And these are all attributes of good community members online. Baby boomers like to lead.
Gen X are not collaborative. They like to work on their own. They are the worst-parented generation in history (two words: latchkey kid) and they are used to doing things on their own. That's why LinkedIn is the killer networking app for Gen X: There is no networking. You put your contacts into a database and you're done. Back to work. Gen X is fast and efficient and so is LinkedIn.
But Gen Y wants to make genuine connections. They are the first generation that grew up being taught social skills in school. They are the first generation that grew up with social networking tools at hand all the time. They love their parents and their parents told them to network to get a job, and they are doing that. Gen Y is great at having conversations online. They just need a place to do it in a professional way. That's where my company, BrazenCareerist.com, comes in. We provide the conversation from Facebook and the professionalism from LinkedIn.
You’ve written about how your work sees a lot of business plans crossing your desk. Can you describe a particularly crazy or outlandish one you’ve seen of late?
The crazy thing is the people who get feedback from investors that says, "This business is not big enough to fund." It's a very common problem — that it's a good idea but it will never have a big enough exit to warrant investors coming in. And people just ignore that. They think it's the idea that matters. But really, it's very hard to come up with an idea big enough to take in capital. So the crazy things I hear are people who get feedback and then pretend they didn't get that feedback.
What’s your take on corporate policies that govern the online publishing activities of employees?
If you let your employees go to cocktail parties and talk about their jobs then they already know how to police themselves. Conversations are the same online and offline. People are not morons. They know how to manage themselves, and if they don't, then fire them for being morons. You'd do that anyway, without corporate blogging policies.
Who are some of your favorite bloggers today, and why?
I like Heather Armstrong because she's so amazingly creative and innovative. I love her new blog that is all hate mail. I like Michael Arrington for his snark. He can take a boring company and write in such interesting ways. I like Jezebel because they are women with an edge. (Sometimes they end up ripping on me, but at least they always do it in interesting ways.)
What’s your advice to young “careerists” who happen to blog and/or microblog?
Use your blog to figure out who you are and what you are good at and who the best people are for you to connect with.
What’s your advice for aspiring professional bloggers?
Professional blogger? Really? Think about your blog as an audience builder for selling something that has a higher margin than advertising. Unless you're Heather Armstrong, you should use your blog as a marketing tool, not a business.
Follow Technorati