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Alan Weiss Doesn’t ‘Get’ Blogging

I really enjoyed Alan Weiss’s presentation Friday – Except for his comments about blogging. It’s not the first time I’ve heard those words and they always come from someone who is not a blogger, has never blogged, and does not understand blogging’s potential. I have never heard anyone say, “I’ve been blogging regularly for two years and it’s a complete waste of time.”

Alan spoke of gaining an early reputation as a contrarian and while it occurred to me that perhaps he is doing just that, but from the tone of his voice when he said, “Blogs are worthless” and “Nobody reads them” I think he was being sincere. I guess this means that I’m going to have to assume the mantle of contrarian on this issue.

First, as for Alan’s “Nobody reads them” comment: Not only do CEOs and senior executives read blogs, many are blogging themselves. TheNewPR maintains a list of them. Alan mentioned Marriott and Hewlett Packard as some of his clients. He undoubtedly would be surprised to discover that J Willard Marriott Jr, CEO of Marriott International has a blog. So does Eric Kintz, VP of Global Marketing Strategy and Excellence for Hewlett-Packard.

In fact TheNewPR’s list contains 272 names of people in leadership positions of various organizations who blog. Some of them are:

• Rudi Fischer, CEO, Telekom Austria
• Sab Kanaujia, VP, NBC Digital Media Group
• Richard Charkin, Chief Executive, Macmillan Publishers Ltd
• Simon Waldman, Director of Digital Publishing, Guardian Newspapers
• Scott Anderson, Director of shared content, Tribune Publishing and Interactive
• Marc Babej, President, Reason Inc.
• Randy Baseler, VP of Marketing, Boeing Commercial Airplanes
• Carole Brown, Chair, Chicago Transit Board
• Colin Crawford, VP/Online, International Data Group
• Michael M. Crow, Arizona State University President
• Marc Cuban, HDNET & Dallas Mavericks
• Chad Dickerson, CTO, InfoWorld
• John Dragoon, Chief Marketing Officer, Novell
• Michael Dunn, VP, Hearst Interactive Media
• Jeff Jaffe, CTO, Novell
• Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman, General Motors Corporation
• Lisa Meyers Brown, VP for Marketing, American Cancer Society’s Eastern Division
• Justin Rattner, CTO, Intel
• Greg Papadopoulos, CTO, Sun Microsystems
• Bob Parsons, President, godaddy.com
• Michael Powell, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission
• Michael Pusateri, VP of Engineering, Disney ABC Cable Networks Group
• Joe Wikert, Vice President and Publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Professional/Trade division
• Steve Wilson, Senior Director of Global Web Communications, McDonald’s
• Hu Yoshida, VP and CTO, Hitachi Data Systems

Someday soon, Alan Weiss will be meeting with a large potential client. The decision-maker will hand Alan one of Hugh MacLeod’s Streetcards. Alan will stare at it blankly and flip it over and over in two hands as a question forms on his face. At that moment Alan will lose the client and not even know it.

Or perhaps between now and then he will ‘get it’ and – as he so often said Friday – he will marvel at how stupid he was just two weeks ago.

IMC-USA's Email Daily Tip Today About Blogging

I subscribe to IMC-USA's email Tip of the Day and I almost always find something valuable to take away. Interestingly, this morning's tip was about blogging. The question posed was:

Is blogging an effective way to get business? If so, how do I go about it?

The reply was not much more that a quote of the Merriam-Webster dictionary and was pretty disappointing. I responded by sending them an email which appears below:

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I begin my mornings by reading your ‘Daily Tips’ email and I almost always find something valuable to take away. Unfortunately, I think your tip this morning regarding blogs does a great disservice to our members. A blog is such an effective tool that I think every consultant should have one. Blogging is a cutting-edge marketing tool that is immediate, personal, and engaging, and is within the financial reach of everyone.

The biggest challenge most consultants face is getting business. In fact, two of the three bullet-points on the IMC-USA website’s Education page are “Get Known” and “Get Business”, both of which are blogging’s strengths. Consultants can benefit from blogging is several ways:

Google Juice

Almost everyone with a problem to solve begins their quest for an answer with a Google search. There is no better way to raise your search engine rankings than a blog containing informative, engaging, and insightful content. Google likes fresh content and each blog post appears to Google as a new page, rasing your ranking. Not only that, other people who find your blog’s content informative will link to it, resulting in more links to you than you could afford to acquire by any other means.

Free exposure

Influential people read the blogosphere. A columnist for the Boston Globe is a regular reader of one of my blogs (and I read her blog too). There is no better way to get noticed by the mainstream press than to blog passionately about topics in your industry.

Direct Access to your Audience

Almost everyone has a story about spending time with a newspaper reporter only to either have the story spiked or appear so completely re-written that your original message disappeared. A blog is a way to bypass the gatekeepers in the media and get your message out to the audience most important to you: your current and potential customers.

Differentiate Yourself

Every consultant has his or her ‘What’ and ‘How’: ‘What you do’ and ‘How you do it’. The ‘What you do’ part is probably not unique. There are most likely several other consultants in your community doing exactly what you do. The important part is the ‘How’. You have probably developed your own unique ‘How’ and have demonstrated its effectiveness repeatedly. A blog is the perfect platform for showcasing your ‘How’ and its effectiveness, and is key to providing your potential clients with the perception of the difference between you and your competitors.

Build Trust

By blogging about your industry and writing about that which you are most knowledgeable, readers will begin to see you as a resource and authority on your topic. They will begin to trust you and your advice.

There is a second type of trust: personal trust. Through your blog, your current and potential clients will begin to see you not as a two-dimensional cardboard cutout but as a three-dimensional figure. They will connect with you and come to trust you enough to feel comfortable doing business with you.

Conversation

A blog is part of a conversation. No aspect of blogging is more important. Our clients are smart and saavy. They participate in various online communities and learn from each other. We can ignore those online conversations, in which case our markets will get smarter faster than we do. Alternatively, we can participate in those online conversations and learn from them, and create an opportunity for the other participants to learn about us.

The other aspect to this conversation is that other experts in your field are already blogging. The blogosphere provides you with the equivalent to an online industry conference where you and your peers can learn from each other and share the latest trends and news.

Improve Your Image

Several years ago, having a website or email address was enough to present the image that you were forward-thinking technically and marketing-saavy. A blog does that for you today. If your competitors are not yet blogging then you are immediately differentiating yourself from the pack. And your blog demonstrates that you are open and honest in your business dealings.

The bottom line is that there is no better way for a consultant to showcase his or her talents and boost exposure than a blog.