The number one secret of the great blogs
Being a Web Developer myself, I keep finding myself thinking of new ideas of web 2.0 sites to build. And now being a Railer, it seems it gives much more power to actually build a killer web app 
This guy, Seth Godin, is a well-known Marketing professional and speaker. He really captures the essence in what the costumer wants in a product or service.
The things you learn when you have a blog, or at least when you try to build a great blog on a certain subject, are probably the same things you’ll use when creating a web 2.0 application. That leads to this very interesting article I found on Seth’s blog, which I re-post here.
That makes a lot of sense. After you read that book you love, where can you go to get more of that insight? The author’s blog. Like, once when I read “Freakonomics” I went straight to the author’s blog. I knew I could go there to keep update on the stuff he mentions in the actual book.
37signals is leading a tribe through their blog. In Brazi Fabio Akita and Carlos Brando for instance, are leading a tribe of passionate Rails developers.
What tribe are you willing to lead?
Without further ado, here’s the article.
The number one secret of the great blogs
Every one of them leads a tribe.
Boingboing readers recognize each other at conferences. We use the same shorthand, we recognize the same memes. Huffingtonpost editors don’t try to reach everyone. Instead, they are hosting a digital cocktail party for invited guests that have something in common. Garr Reynolds doesn’t try to teach everyone about Powerpoint… instead, he leads a tribe of people committed to changing the way the world communicates in meetings.
Go down the list. Hugh leads a tribe. Josh leads a tribe. So does Mitch. And Guy, who just wrote a book for his tribe too. It’s not hard to find other examples for my thesis.
In each case, the function of the blog is to be a standard bearer, the north star that tribe members can point to as a place to meet or for ideas to circle around. The blog isn’t about the writer, it’s about the readers.
The key takeaway is this: once you realize that your job is to find and connect and lead a tribe, to give them something to talk about and a place to go, it’s a lot easier to write a blog that works.
