Blogging for a Purpose Downeast
The Internet holds out real promise for small companies and community groups here in Maine. It makes it possible to get a message out to people in a professional way at very little cost. The message can be written out—like the one you are reading now—or it can be something the people listen to—a “podcast.†You can do all of this without having to be a rocket scientist—and without having to spend much money—maybe none at all. As the Internet evolves into its Web 2.0 stage (see my thoughts on the promise and perils of this for Downeast Maine), these kinds of publishing efforts are becoming easy, affordable, and broadly available.
Which is why we use “blogs†here at Acadia Partners. It is a nearly effortless way to publish. Effortless from a technical standpoint, anyway. There is still the matter of doing the writing. And that seems to get in the way for a lot of people. Or is it the technical part that still gets in the way for some people?
A professional acquaintance of mine—Jon Udell—wrote a blog entry of his own about these kinds of questions last week. He is thinking about writing a book to help more people do the kind of thing that Denny and I are doing here at Acadia Partners—using a blog as a way to tell interested readers what we are working on and what we are thinking about.
You can jump to Jon’s blog entry here and see what he has to say. As you can see, he is struggling with some questions about why more people are not already doing this kind of thing. It is interesting to translate Jon’s questions into our context, here in Maine.
Over the past months, since signing on here at Acadia Partners to do business development, I have met with dozens of organizations that are anxious to get their story out to more people. They publish some newsletters and they hold some meetings that usually don’t draw enough people. They are generally doing important work—trying to protect coastal areas, doing research about wetlands, trying to bring back cod fishing, trying to stimulate small business growth—and they have a good story to tell. I know because I have listened to these stories over coffee. But they are not getting the stories told to a broader audience.
So…why not use a blog to talk about what they are doing? I’ll admit, a blog like the one you are reading now doesn’t draw thousands of readers. On a good day, if we get the word out, it can draw a hundred. But that is a hundred people that know something more about what is going on here at Acadia Partners. A good thing. Why don’t more organizations use this tool?
Jon figures that one possibility is that people just don’t know how to do it. If they know about blogs at all, they think of them as ways that people share personal facts and gossip. Blogs are something you hear about on the news, something strange and maybe a little racy, and they have nothing to do with you.
If that is what is going on, then the problem is just that companies and organizations have not yet figured out that working people can use blogs to tell others about their work. And, if THAT is the problem, well, then Jon has one important book to write and he should get at it, right now.
On the other hand, maybe there is some bigger problem with using blogs to get people engaged with your company or with your organization. Maybe there is a good reason that people are not making more use of blogs this way. Maybe Denny and I and Acadia Partners are barking up the wrong tree.
Well … it wouldn’t be the first time.
Taking Jon’s question seriously, and responding from the perspective of someone who has written personal blogs and professional blogs—some of them read by thousands of people a day—I can see a couple of things that get in the way of using blogs as a way to tie more people into a company or into a non-profit organization.
One problem—a big one—shows up in the title of Jon’s own posting. He wrote about “The Blog as Resume and Autobiography.†Well, I think he has put his finger on part of the problem without even knowing it. Resumes and Autobiographies are both personal.
I have a blog on my personal site about my dog. You can go check it out at www.zoellick.com — but I don’t know why you would want to. Its personal—worse, it’s about my dog.
What I write here at Acadia Partners and the kinds of things that I used to write for the Gilbane Report are not at all personal. They have nothing to do with resumes and autobiography. They have to do with the needs and interests of an audience.
Audience. That is an important idea, and maybe a reason that we don’t see more in the way of professional blogs. When I am writing about my dog—heck—I don’t even care if there IS an audience. I’m doing this for me (and the dog, who does sometimes watch what is happening on my computer screen)—and for some family and close friends. The “audience†question is easy to figure out.
But it is a much more difficult and important question here, for this blog at Acadia Partners. I have got a number of different audiences—board members, partners within the National Park system, financial supporters, partners at colleges and universities, partners at non-profit organizations working together with Acadia Partners on natural resource issues—for this particular piece, the audience includes Jon Udell. When writing a piece I have to think carefully about the audience and make sure that what I am writing is useful for them, or at least entertaining.
Jon—are you out there? I think that this audience thing can be hard. When I have written books, if they sold well, it was because I understood the need of the audience. The books that did not sell—I can see in hindsight—did not reach out to a clearly defined audience. I would be willing to bet that when people move from writing a personal blog to a professional one, the question of audience is like running into a wall. They can’t get past it. Maybe your book can help.
For the rest of you who are not Jon Udell, many of you actually have a simpler situation than we do here at Acadia Partners. For example, if you are in a retail business, your audience is your customers. If you are selling to them by mail order, a blog is a great way to maintain a connection with them—to tell them what is going on at the farm or in the studio or at the shop during the winter months—to keep these customers connected to your business.
If you can figure out who your audience is, the rest of this “blogging†stuff is pretty simple. It might be a great way to extend your website, using the Internet to tie more people more closely to your business or organization. And you’ll make the Internet a more interesting place.
Here is the deal. If you start a blog, let me know. (Send an email to bill at acadiapartners.org) I’ll set up a way to follow what you post. You’ll have at least one reader, and, working together, we’ll start crossing that Downeast Digital Divide and start to capitalize on the Web 2.0 era.