IF a Tree Falls and Everybody is on the Internet…

It’s a fair enough question, with several potentially valid interpretations.

It got me to wondering, “If I write a blog post and nobody views it, what’s the point?”

I think that what we do online could be broken down into 2 activities; the stuff we do because we just feel like doing it and the stuff we do with some sort of purpose. I suppose Facebook realized this when it decided to have distinctions between its regular pages and business pages.

I have a business page. I’m not sure why I have one, except I somehow think that down the line, I will be glad I have one. Somehow it will help me make money. I don’t actually know how and I suspect that almost all of the people out there who claim they know how to make money with Facebook business pages are simply making money by selling other people on the fact they too can make money with a Facebook business page.

Similarly, I’m not sure that the effort I put into answering questions on LinkedIn’s and other sites or doing podcasts, my own or celebrity blogs, etc. will actually ever turn into a single red cent.

Despite the fact that everywhere you turn, there’s a new discussion about monetization, it would seem that a large part of this monetization comes from one’s ability to peddle a bit of snake oil. But then again, what is the internet but a bit of smoke and mirrors? I suppose if L. Frank Baum were to write the Wizard of Oz today, we’d peel back the curtain only to find out the whole thing was a CG creation or perhaps a virtual world.

This blog post you are reading right now, doesn’t have the right keywords or trending terms to get me SEO, but even if it did, how many people are going to read it? Those that do will probably see it as just one more little piece of writing in their day. They may go “hmmmm”. Few will comment back. Even fewer will link or refer someone to it. How many will actually take the time to go and visit other pages on my site? Will they even care about who I am or what I do?

So while I wish this blog post would help monetize me, it is very much something I do because I feel like doing it.

Judging from the vast amounts of started discussions that go undiscussed, blog posts that are read by precious few, tweets that seem to go quietly into the good night, emails that are never opened and the general hustle and bustle of just trying to get heard in today’s world, it might seem that even if there is somebody there in the forest, the tree may still not make a sound.

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