I won’t buy your blog topics

If you’re Michael Jordan, I’ll buy your sneakers. If you are Sean John, I’ll buy your fragrance. If you’re Martha Stewart, I’ll probably buy your kitchenware. Well, add some question marks to the last one. The bottom line is that my relative perceived value of those items, if you’re into economics, relates well to the amount of money I’m willing to spend on them, and to the benefits that will go with their ownership. Now, allow me to be blunt and skip the niceties:

If you’re Chris Brogan, I definitely won’t buy your blog topics.

And unless you like people selling you a bill of goods, I suggest you don’t either.

If you haven’t been paying much attention to his blog and/or tweets, you probably don’t know what this is all about. You can read more about it here:

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/blog-topics/

Done? Good. Now, if you’re still with me, here’s my two cents on the matter: I’m disgusted.

Don’t take me wrong, Chris seems like a nice, successful guy, and I’m sure he’s got smarts to last until kingdom come, but this move rubs me the wrong way for two main reasons:

1. Social Media stardom is starting to take itself too seriously. To pretend it has reached the maturity level, if stardom in general can be called mature at any point, where someone can slap his/her name onto a generic product and sell it, is a little insulting to us audiences and consumers. SoMe people, sorry to break it to you: you’re not quite there yet.

2. Blog topics are not a product. Ideas and expertise are commodities, yes, but these are not ground-breaking innovations. They are not part of a consultancy service either. What are they then? For me, they’re chunks of text that I could have come up with in an hour or two of topical research.

Come on, if you’ve set out to write a blog, make it your own. Completely. If you need inspiration, for Pete’s sake, look for it, don’t buy it.

To his credit, Chris acknowledges these things are geared towards a specific crowd:

“Is it for everyone? Definitely not. Is it for someone who wants to keep their blog populated with interesting topics and ideas, and who could use some creative encouragement? That’s who this will serve the best.”

To sell something, that’s as good a reason as any: there’s probably a market out there. Nonetheless, if you’re one of those best served by this initiative, the chances your blog post will be relevant to me and many others are, well, slim.

What do you think, folks?