When looking at the frequency blog posts are cranked out, it seems that in the era of Web 2.0 this saying is more true than ever . It leads to the phenomenon, that bloggers, despite the dialog functionalities offered by the technology, often write at each other through own posts on their respective blogs instead of having a dialog around one post. I believe this latter way is better suited when having the reader in mind as it is easier to follow a discussion
As so many buying processes today start with an inquiry to a search engine, I agree that it is essential that blogs used in the marketing mix of a business need a steady flow of fresh well thought out material to have a high likelihood to appear in these searches.Writing a blog is however only one element to build a personal brand via the internet.
I have at least anecdotal evidence for this. Recently, a sales manager asked me for advice through LinkedIn. My contributions to 'answers' there and my reading list that I maintain on the same media were the decisive factors for reaching out to me. This experience made me also awrae that one can subscribe as a follower to these reading lists. I personally like this almost better than Twitter, although I give interested people an opportunity to follow me there as well. Frankly, I think that following my reading least is probably of more value than reading on Twitter what I am currently doing.
Motivated by this experience and with the intention to “walk the talk”, I have spent more time participating in discussion groups like this LinkedIn.
I also participated in discussions on The Customer Collective writing more profound comments than “I like this” or even less time consuming by just voting on a post. Here is an example. TCC It happened to be in connection with the post having gotten the highest ever number of comments and reads on this site. The dialog then evolved to an new subject TCCbis.
Yes this is taking time away from writing posts on the own blog. First experiences however seem to prove, that it is not to the detriment of building a personal brand. I guess I am though still learning “the marketing mix” for the era of social media.
Chris, very salient points. In the interest of promoting your affinity to the "latter" I am leaving this comment here as opposed to writing my own response ;-)
ReplyDeleteI too have been really intrigued at where the dialogue is occurring, and believe that one must go where the action is happening if you want to build a personal brand - and more importantly engage and extend the conversation to educate oneself as well as the reader.
This being said, it is totally fascinating me that LinkedIn might actually becoming useful. I have created my own ChangeForge group there. I must admit that I started this with a thought of resharing older content that I still thought was relevant, but I am finding that now it is a way to possibly start new conversations, back feed my blog, and even help make connections I might not otherwise have made had I remained a "lurker" for lack of a better word.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and confirming my suspicions.
Hi Chris, Great points.
ReplyDeleteI would add that sometimes upon reading a blog post, I often find myself with an idea for one of my own pop up in my mind.
This leaves me with two problems.
1. To really expose this idea, I may need to research it or simply think about it some more.
2.Writing and formulating a post size responce may take some time.
So what i end up doing in most cases is highlighting the orginal idea as part of my comment, but teasing it out later as a blog post.
I also believe that comments like "good post" etc continue to be useful, not to the reader but to the writer. Just because you don't have something more constructive to add, doesn't mean that you shouldn't acknowledge the ideas and/or the effort.
I think one of the better aspects of blogs/social media is its fluidness. There are not hard and fast rules, and yes it's often messy but the exploration works to promote the creativity.