I had a conversation last night with a friend of mine who is very successful in the marketing industry. It was an eye opening experience for me.
Two factors converged in my mind that set me up for a huge mistaken assumption on my part.
The first factor is that I have been blogging for quite a while now. SuccessCREEations is not my first foray into the blogging world. Because I have been around the community for so long there are basic concepts about blogging that I figure everyone knows.
They don’t.
The second factor has to do with what I know about my friend’s professional background. He is very good at what he does. I know in the past he owned and published some local magazines at one point. And there are huge potential benefits and ways blogging can be directly applied to his field of marketing.
So I assumed from some of my earlier conversations with him that he already knows the basics of blogging.
He doesn’t.
The conversation last night revolved around RSS and why Feeds are an even more powerful marketing tool than the monthly email newsletter that he sends out to the tens of thousands of folks on his mailing list.
We went around a frustrating conversational loop a couple times before he stopped me short and said, “Chris, I don’t have a clue what you are talking about. When it comes to blogs I guess I’m pretty stupid.”
Not stupid. Just uninformed.
The good news is my friend is definitely learning quickly. He will probably start his own blog before the end of the year.
The whole conversation last night has gotten me thinking. If a successful marketing professional like my friend needs someone to go through the very basics of business blogging with him, how much more does the rest of the business community need some simple explanations?
So along that vein I am putting together a series that I’m calling Business Blogging 101 to cover some of those basics. My first post will be in the next day or so and cover RSS and Feeds for a beginning business blogger.
I know several folks have written on the subject before. But it appears we need to give it even more coverage for those out there who are just now looking at the blogging world for the first time and trying to get up to speed quickly. So the redundancy will only help us all in the end.
Enjoy!
Chris, you are so right! I think that those of us who are blogging regularly forget that it is still only a very small percentage of the population that knows what a blog is. And, even as a blogger, I look forward to reading your series!
Kirsten, I think just about anything we do these days has its own terminology associated with it.
We had to laugh the first time I hung out with some of my wife’s coworkers when she was working in the veterinary field. I basically sat there like a heifer staring at a new gate the whole evening. They were speaking a different language than I knew.
She said, “See! That’s how I feel anytime you start talking about ships and airplanes.”
I think a lot of the time when we start talking about blogging to folks who aren’t familiar with what it’s all about, they mostly just nod politely rather than calling themselves out as my friend did last night, rather than admit they really don’t understand.
100% Right on. Every word of it. And beautifully written too.
Liz, You’re too kind! Thanks.
Chris, sometimes, things need to be explained several ways before the lightbulb flickers. There’s a need for fresh explanations. With your knack of getting the point across, Business Blogging 101 will fill that need wonderfully.