Rant: I am not a blogger

A quick rant:

I am getting a sudden increase in email, phone calls and other inbound traffic which is based on the presumption I'm a blogger. Lots of stuff about SEO (ugh), "driving traffic", offers to write posts on my blog, offers to pay me to write posts, people trying to talk me into writing posts about their companies and so on. I'm not interested in "stories", I'm not interested in your web buttons, I'm not interested in having my posts syndicated on sites not frequented by my clients & contributors. And I'm certainly not interested in unsolicited press releases that Executive A from Company B is speaking at Conference Z.

So let me set the record straight: I am not a blogger.

I'm an industry analyst & consultant who happens to write a blog. My company is called Disruptive Analysis, not Disruptive Wireless.

I am no more a blogger than a politician, or a vendor's head of product marketing, or a TV journalist that happens to use a blog to reach out to potential customers / voters / viewers / whomever.

This blog is a tool, like the phone or email. I'm not an "emailer" or a "phoner". There is no advertising. It's a means to an end, not an end in itself. If it ceased to generate business for me, I'd stop writing it tomorrow without a second thought. I'm not interested in some nebulous and fluffy "blogging community".

The blog exists to generate interest in my published reports, consulting service, workshops and speaking engagements. Its secondary role is through the comments, which have often valuable insights. And the third role is for awareness - it's useful to me when people I meet have read my stuff & recognise my name.

I do not mind receiving (relevant) press releases. But read first, to be sure it really is relevant and not tangential to what I research. And then ask me if it's OK to add me to your list.

The sole exception to this is for those (few) large vendor companies that weirdly have better-resourced and more responsive "blogger relations" teams than those for analyst relations. In those cases, I'm happy to masquerade temporarily as a blogger, if you get me better access to the company than an AR team that doesn't recognise independent analysts.

Rant over. Apologies if it changed your view of who I am & what I do - but that's how it is.