Crastinate

Dear Blogger,

Over the years I have become more and more involved in the world of social media to the point where my entire career and much of my personal life revolves around the business of social media. I have also been lucky enough to have met and become friends with many amazing people in the industry including some very well known bloggers. Most of these people (well, some of them) are smart and deserve the attention they are getting. There is, however, a noticeable trend amongst these “celebrity” bloggers which I not only find annoying, but find to be antithetical to blogging as a whole.

The beautiful thing about blogging is the ability for anyone to get in the game. Anyone can be famous. Bloggers are supposed to represent the little people’s voice. So many bloggers made their name off the backs of the poor customer service and indifference to customer satisfaction of large corporations. The people finally had voices to back them. Bloggers are now recognized with having real influence. With influence and power, however, often comes greed.

Recently I’ve noticed many bloggers (I won’t point fingers) that seem to think they’re better than everyone. They think they deserve free passes to conferences. They think they deserve free cell phones or free software. They think they deserve to be treated as upper class citizens because they can wreak havoc with their dinky little site. They think their 50,000 unique visitors a month (if that) gives them some sort of clout.

Let’s be clear about this. Companies give freebies to small-time bloggers (which 99.9% are, and yes, that includes you) to flatter you. They know that almost all of what they’re providing you for free is a waste but they realize that the aggregate of this blogger outreach might have a real impact. The aggregate is where the value is. You, by yourself, and your dinky little site, aren’t worth anything by itself.

So next time you’re complaining that a hotel won’t give you a late checkout or that the airline won’t let you on the flight when you show up 30 minutes before the flight (when they clearly tell you to be there two hours beforehand), don’t complain and act like they did something wrong. Their customer service might suck but your attitude sucks. You’re not famous. You’re a blogger. You represent the people. Start acting like it.

Ely Rosenstock