“I’ve been busy…”
I almost started this post with those three words that are the death knell of the blog. And I think part of it is that I’m still hooked on expressions like “death knell.”

I have been busy reading lately. I’m using the Feedly plug-in for Firefox that has miraculously organized my Google Reader into something a human wants to consume.

And with Feedly I’ve been reading Seth Godin and Chris Brogan side-by-side. What I find interesting are the differences in styles of these Tribal Leaders. Seth writes in a sharp prose that, across a few sentences, distills a lifetime of experience. You immediately get the sense that Seth is someone who has walked the road and is taking the time to look back and lend a hand.

Reading Brogan, the reader feels like a passenger in the car while in motion. And if you view his video, he really is in a car that happens to be parked somewhere during the recording. He’s walking next to you and talking and risking, and you’re there alongside.

When I think about this new generation of Tribal Leaders, and even if I go back a decade to someone like Philip Greenspun, I think it’s their ability to take the reader on a journey that makes them so engaging. In Philip, we have a guy with a few degrees from MIT headfirst in the Dot-com world or flying around it in his spare time. In Seth, we have an accessible sage willing to help us with a new marketing yoga that begs us to achieve happiness by being interesting. And we can watch and learn from Chris, pick up some tips along the way, and trust that he’ll still be out there even if we’re stuck in here.

One thing they all share in common…they create content like the wind. Not volumes of content. Just a good, steady trickle.

I don’t think that blogs or Social Media have created these Tribal Leaders. I think that these are interesting people who have a much larger audience for the notes-in-a-bottle they send while wandering.