Yesterday I went to lunch with Keith Ferrazzi, author of the bestselling book Never Eat Alone. During our lunch we talked a lot about the increasing importance of relationships and how corporations and individuals need to live by the network effect. He said that to build a network you must be generous. This got me thinking. How generous are individual and corporate bloggers? The answer is some are very generous, others completely aren't. And those who are generous are by far more successful and influential than the rest of the pack.
Robert Scoble and Mark Cuban are two of the most generous people I know. Not only do they pump out lots of great content that's worth reading, they are giving when it comes to links and their time. They also publish full text feeds, a hallmark of benevolent bloggers. FInally, they share deep and profound thoughts that they probably could keep proprietary.
Then there are others - and I won't name them - who are not generous. In fact, even worse, they are grievous. They syndicate snippets rather than publish full text RSS feeds. They don't credit other bloggers who they clearly steal content from. They are filled with just nasty criticism, rather than a balance of ideas and constructive advice. They focus solely on themselves and not an iota on others. I have unsubscribed from all of these blogs. They're just not worth my time. By the way this doesn't just apply to bloggers. It goes for comments too. I ignore any trash that people leave on my blog or others and only focus on that which is constructive feedback (positive or negative).
The generosity dynamic that exists in the blogosphere is really important. If you want to have a successful blog - one that is read frequently by even a small audience of import - you have to be generous. There's no way around it. You have to lavishly dish out links, advice, news, ideas, commentary, freebies, you name it. It's up to you. However, if you're going to live on the Dark Side of the blogosphere and be stingy, you will live a lonely life.
