Active And Passive Side Of Blogging.
“Laid Back” – A phrase that seems like a nightmare to a blogger, is a truth that no one can prevent. As human beings, we have the tendency to slack. this does not imply that we are not capable of being excellent. It just shows that we have elements of both, each trying to win over the other (more or less like good and evil). I call these two sides as the “Active” and the “Passive”.
The “Active” and the “Passive” has a lot of impact on the daily lives of bloggers. An “Active” blogger takes initiative, strives to be productive and does the hard work. The “Passive” counterpart is a big time procrastinator, shirks from menial tasks and tries to find shortcuts, even if they may not be the right things to do.
Classifying yourself as a pure “Active” or “Passive” blogger can be a bit strong. But, there are shades of both, one shade is bigger than the other one (more like a two face you see in the image (evil smile)). One can identify this by analyzing the behavour of “Active” and “Passive” bloggers. Let us take some examples which will help you understand the scenario better:
General Blogging:
The “Active”: An Ideal version of this type of blogger is a task master. A productive guy who does not stop with writing just the article. There’s a lot more it. He tweaks and optimizes and then markets it. Next, he analyzes his posts according to statistics. It is not the quality of article that matters to him, but the actual learning curve which will eventually lead to the path of becoming a problogger one day,
The “Passive”: The type of blogger that most of us experience in one stage or the other. We sometimes call it writer’s block just to avoid embarrassment but we are actually lazing around, dozing off :D. The Passive sounds fun but it is the path to disaster valley. The Passive guy is only interested in the results and hence, he tries to focus just on writing and super quick methods to make money online – the kind of methods which are sold by many crooks. Eventually, they are either cheated by some crook or they start using black hat methods.
Commenting:
The “Passive”: The “Good Post” and “Thanks for sharing” kind of comments are not adding value to the discussion. They were supposed to be of value years ago, when blogging had just started. Everyone was new to the concept, so short and supportive comments like these were always welcome. But, nowadays, this is a passive way of commenting. Most of these comments are spam, but even the real ones are of no use. Good Post does not reflect your opinions and ideas. It is an indicator that you are too lazy to write a thoughtful comment.
The “Active”: The Active commenter is every blogger’s favorite. The one who treats comments as a forum to discuss. He adds value to the forum by giving his insight and topping it up with his opinions. It can be a critique, or a strong reaction. But, whatever it is, it adds a spark to the commenting forum and adds to the reputation of the commenter.
Social Media
The “Passive”: The shameless self plug or sharing like a robot are signs of this guy. The Passive tries his best to automate each and every bit but fails because he is easily ignored by the people in his network (The people in your network are not dumb!).
The “Active”: He is the content curator who shares useful stuff which may or may not be related to his work. He understands the “social” in social media and makes it a point to be a part of conversations and discuss on big and small issues.
I would not ask which side you have been on, because i am pretty sure its been both. But, I would ask you, what do you consider “Active” and “Passive” in terms of blogging?
