Welcome to 34th edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss from Michael Schechter (Honora, A Better Mess), Howie Goldfarb (Blue Star Strategic Marketing), and me!
For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.
This week we have thoughts successful blogging, “science” in the Catholic church, and people’s stupidity.
Measure Successful Blogging In Years
Michael on Building an Audience. It’s common for those who are attempting to build an audience to grow frustrated, especially early on in the process. Things don’t happen soon enough or it often seems like they may never happen at all. We look at our heroes, we see the audiences they have and we compare ourselves to them. We look at our friends and see them further along in their own efforts. We want what they have and we want it now.
We do what we can, we figure out how to do the best work and we craft methods to garner attention. Sometimes this works, but more often than not, there’s one ingredient that makes all of the difference…time. Creating a audience, one that will follow you from project to project, one that is interested in hearing and supporting your ideas takes talent, but it also takes a lot longer than we’d like. If you’re struggling or just frustrated, keep going and keep at it. You’ll get better, people will see you’re in it for the long haul and years from now you’ll look back at what you’ve created and smile.
But don’t take my word for it, I’m only a few years in. Patrick, on the other hand, has been at it for nearly a decade. His piece serves as a great reminder that those who have built envy-inducing followings have often been earning and building them for years.
Howie on Science. I find it funny and sad that people and institutions can embrace science when it benefits them, or reject it when it benefits them or messes with their world view. This humorous tale of how the Catholic church categorized beavers as fish is quite funny. And recently they also classified alligator as fish making the New Orleans restaurant business happy and me because I love dem gator tacos!
Drive Hits Cyclist; Runs and Tweets
Gini on Stupidity. There is almost nothing that angers me more than a motorist who says cyclists don’t belong on the road because we don’t pay taxes (that’s an argument for another day) and then attempts to run us off the road. I once had a guy in a green van swerve into the bike lane every time I came up on the right-hand side of him at a stop sign. Not only is dangerous, it’s infuriating. And then there is this woman who also believes cyclists don’t belong on the road…so she hit one. And then fled the scene of the accident and tweeted about it.
Now it’s your turn. Is there a podcast, video, book, or article you think we need to see?