What kind of a Blogger are you?

Ron Young posts about a webinar that he attended wherein the speaker presented about there being four kinds of people in organizations – couch potatoes, collectors, critics, and creators. Just like Ron, I too think it is a cool classification. It may be based on Kotler’s marketing lessons (on laggards, followers, early adopters and innovators) but these terms are quite appealing. Needless to say, for any new initiative that involves change, it will be important to understand where who belongs.

Don’t you think even Bloggers could be categorized thus? After all, the category one belongs to in the context of organizational analysis would be reflected in one’s behaviour/characteristic as a blogger as well! So, hypothetically, if every employee in the organization blogs, they can be categorized as one of the four types of people and change initiatives can take valuable inputs from this analysis! We could use the Pareto principle (80:20) for assigning a category to bloggers. That is, what they do 80% of the time or what 80% of their posts are about determines which category they belong to. Based on these categories, I am taking the liberty of imagining what people belonging to each of these may behave like, as bloggers.

Creators-Bloggers: These are the bloggers who look inward most of the time. They normally write posts that don’t originate anywhere else. They might obviously be triggered off by what they read and hear, but most of the contents of their post are bound to be from within and original. Many of them are bound to be idealistic though there are practically-oriented ones as well. Reading these blogs would be an inspirational, thought-provoking, exciting, and knowledge-creating experience. Dave Pollard, in my opinion, is a great example of a creator-blogger. He is analytically creative or perhaps creatively analytical, if you like!

Critics-Bloggers: These are the bloggers who rant, rave, or ramble most of the time. They react to external events. They analyze and judge other’s ideas and accept/reject/take a neutral stand on them rather than create things on their own. I would imagine that most bloggers are of this kind! It basically flows from the fact that most people are also of this kind. I am not going to point to any specific blog under this category. Take a casual walk on blogosphere and you’re bound to bump into many of these. Reading these blogs would be arguably a waste of time unless one is looking to understand general human/customer/market psychology, what’s popular and what isn’t and the like.

Collectors-Bloggers: These are bloggers who have a passion for information and knowledge but for whatever reason, spend more time looking outward and collecting stuff from across the web and outside. By virtue of being collectors, they are always on their toes, are well-connected, know what’s the latest, and can therefore be great advisers. Reading these blogs is bound to keep people well-informed and knowledgeable about the world’s ways as associated with whatever topic the blogger focuses on. These blogs are bound to be a huge asset for people who want to keep track of trends and changes and cope with them and not be left behind in the race that the world runs. Gautam, I think, is a good example of this kind of a blogger. He is a creator as well, but his primary edge is probably in his connections and collections. He is a hub of information and pulls together threads from multiple sources apart from looking inward.

Couch-Potatoes-Bloggers: Quite easy to explain. These are bloggers, or rather, ex-bloggers who don’t exist on the blogosphere any more. I am talking about millions of people who created blogs and then forgot all about them. :). Or maybe it is also about people who never tried blogging because of the effort and discipline it calls for. Well, as for as the benefits of reading these blogs are concerned…….it’s a no-brainer. You can’t read them! :D

So, what kind of a blogger are you? And what kind of bloggers interest you? :)

Ron talks about another classification that he is aware of in the same post. This could perhaps be mapped one on one to the above categories.

10% Creators and Innovators
50% Pragmatists - I'll believe it when I see it!
20% Enthusiasts - boy do we need these supporters
20% Ludites - they will never change