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Business and Blogging

My Preferred Metaphor for Business Blogging

by Des Walsh on May 28th, 2007

Does Liz Strauss never sleep? Always coming up with great project ideas to get the rest of us moving.

Today I’m picking up on her invitation to share a metaphor I use for blogging.

I found out early on in my blog evangelizing role that I do need a metaphor for blogging, especially for business blogging and especially when endeavouring to gain and hold the attention of a business person at a networking function.

An approach which doesn’t work, but which I used early on, goes something like (insert tone of breathless eagerness) “Well, it’s kind of an online diary and you write about various things that interest you and might interest others and it’s time stamped and date stamped and has a thing called syndication or RSS so people don’t actually have to come by your blog all the time to read what you have to say and also people can leave comments and you can engage them in conversation and there are many kinds of blogs and it’s really a great way to promote your business…”. That approach, I discovered, is guaranteed to leave you talking to the air, because your prospective business connection has at some point about half way through your ‘explanation” seen some people on the other side of the room she just has to talk to before they go.

What I use now is a variation of the “blogging as cocktail party” metaphor, as outlined very entertainingly and educationally in Charlie’s post on blogging as the industry cocktail party with an open bar (thanks to Ann Hadley for the link).

My variation on the cocktail party concept is that when I’m at a business gathering or networking event I use the comparison of a local billboard with a networking function. (I would probably only use the cocktail party metaphor if I was actually at a cocktail party, which happens about once in a blue moon.)

In our town there is a very large billboard for a local club and the billboard has changed once, if my memory serves me correctly, in the past three years. If I’m in another city or town and haven’t observed a billboard, I ask the person if there is a billboard locally that springs to mind.

I then ask them if they have a website for their business. Most do: the rest are “thinking about it”. I say, “a blog is really a website, but with some extra features”. When I say this, I say it slowly and intently - I want to ensure their brains connect with their picture of a website.

I then say “You know that billboard….?” and they nod.

Then I say: “Let me ask you, if you were starting a campaign to promote your business, which do you feel would work better for you, a billboard that doesn’t change for months or years, or coming to an event like this, connecting with people, being able to follow up on a first name basis…?”

Most people are looking a bit puzzled at this stage but are typically engaged in wanting to know where this is going and usually say, “an event like this”.

I then say, “Having a traditional website is like having a billboard up, basically unchanging, for months or years, and having a blog is like coming to an event like this, starting and participating in conversations where people actually get to know you and you get to know them”.

I follow up with: “would you agree that people like to do business with people they know and trust?” The person usually agrees and we go on, or not, from there. By this stage I’ve usually gained the attention of at least one of a group of listeners and sometimes more, so I’m able to explain some of the features such as commenting and deal with questions or concerns people have (e.g. scare stories they’ve read or heard about defamatory comments).

Then, more often than not, someone will ask , “Do you have a card?” And we swap cards.

And I follow up.

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