Blogging and Bicycles
Do you remember when no one knew the word blog?
Suddenly, the word is everywhere.
- In the New York Times . . . Edelman Aces PR, NY Times Fails Research
- The BBC has a blog network.
- You can visit a blog at PBS.
Blogs are talked about on TV news, in coffeeshops, and in our kids elementary schools. Not only are blogs showing up everywhere, but wikis, podcasts, and videocasts are too.
You’ve probably heard stories of companies that have had great success with blogs and companies that have experienced horrible results. Perhaps even your company has tried a blog and had something go wrong.
I hear really smart people talk about blogs by repeating stories they’ve never checked out. I also see really smart people walk away from blogs, because they tried it once, and it didn’t work out. I wonder about both. What I wonder is whether they do that with other parts of their businesses? I wonder how they might have responded to the first car or the first computer.
Blogging and Bicycles
Blogging is a lot like riding a bike. When you bike, you don’t start out knowing how. You learn about it by doing it a little right and a litle wrong. If you have someone to help you, it’s easier, but either way, you need to know how all of the parts (the bike’s and yours) work together. You need to figure out where your bike belongs on the road and how to interact with other vehicles besides your own.
When you blog, you need to understand the same sorts of things before you start: how blogging fits and balances with your company culture, how it blends with your overall marketing strategy, and how it matches your customers needs and desires. It is easy to be wildly successful at blogging — employing techniques to take you exactly where you want to go. But it takes a wee bit of learning at first, the same way that riding a bicycle does.
While it’s no fun to learn by falling down, staying off the bike isn’t the answer — especially when the kids you want to reach are in a park miles away where only a bike can go.
Liz Strauss
[...] Once you realize that blogging might add something to your marketing strategy. The first step is to find out all you can and to learn from someone who’s already fallen off the bike so to speak, to learn from someone who knows. [...]
Pingback by Liz Strauss . com Be Curious — May 29, 2006 @ 8:43 am
[...] Blogging and Bicycles by Liz Strauss… Liz writes a good analogy comparing bicycles to blogging on one of her other blogs Liz Strauss .com [...]
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