Normally I wouldn’t pay any real attention to the story I am referencing here but it was one of those that was both tragic and funny at the same time. The New York Times actually put ink to paper (or bytes to memory……whatever) about the fact that two “major” bloggers died of heart attacks in the past three months and another survived a heart attack. Now, I am not discounting the deaths of anyone because there are many who are grieving the loss but is this really a news story?

The article itself said that there are possibly tens of thousands of bloggers so I would suggest that what happened is just the way things go, a numerically normal occurrence, not some kind of death by blogging. When I first read the story I kept checking the byline to make sure I wasn’t really reading an article from The Onion.

What does this say about the internet culture in general? Not much really. Certainly nothing positive or endearing. Let’s be real here, people have been “working themselves to death” since the invention of the desk. In this day and age we just hear about EVERYTHING so it seems like some kind of big deal. The reality is that we are simply hearing about each and every incident that has been occurring forever all over the world but for some reason we confuse this information with some kind of increase in whatever it is we are looking at.

I have just started blogging myself and I didn’t relate to anyone that was mentioned in the article at all. Why? Well it’s pretty simple because I am interested in providing some good information with easy takeaways for small and medium businesses. This “gotta get the story at internet speed” nonsense is just that…..nonsense. Most people are not keeping up with the amount of information that is being thrown at them anyway so why are people keeling over at their keyboards to beat the other guy to the story? Seems a bit over the top to me.

Once again, I am not trying to make light of anyone’s death here. I am not trying to be disrespectful. What I am trying to point out here is the silliness of this mad rush to a 24 hour news breaking society. It’s like anything else, it’ll look like it’s a great way to make money and many people will flock to it but very, very few will be truly successful (of course, the definition of success is truly subjective).

SMB Takeaway: When you are blogging for the benefit of your business don’t overdo it. If you are spending an inordinate amount of time doing it then just dial it back a bit. There is great benefit to blogging but just like anything else, you can have too much of a good thing.

Thanks and have a great day!