To Blog or Not To Blog… What is the Intention?

To blog or not to blog?

For many, it’s a no-brainer: “No, that’s not for me. I don’t write (or) I don’t know what I would write about.”

For some, it’s an easy decision: “Yes! I blog all the time and love having the space to share and exchange ideas.”

For a very few, it’s a difficult decision: “I want to blog, but I want to do it right, not just because I can.”

So, then comes the paramount consideration. . . What should you blog about?

Well, let’s stop right there. It doesn’t matter what you blog about. There’s an audience for any topic imaginable (and some you can’t ever imagine). Bloggers devote way too much thought to what they blog about, forgetting that the primary goal should be to share original thoughts and keep in mind their intentions for writing. It’s not about what you write about, it’s about how you make it yours.

Wait a minute. Back up! What’s this about “intentions?” We’re talking about a blog here. Why does a blog have to be so well-thought-out?

Your intentions for writing your blog DO matter, because:

#1. If you don’t know the intention of your blog, why you are writing it, and believe in it, you won’t stick to it. You’ll lose interest in it, or, you’ll just trudge along barely-willingly because your boss makes you do it.  Thus, your blog will fade away into that cold cemetery full of other blogs that started off with a BANG but quickly were abandoned by their owners.

#2. If you don’t know the intention of your blog, and believe in its purpose, then your readers won’t know it either. Your readers need to be able to identify or relate to your blog in some way that is meaningful to them. If you write about donuts one day, then plate tectonics the next day, that may actually be okay as long as there is a central theme, identity, or relevancy that people can point to.

[I admit that my blog is far from what I envision it to be. It's an evolving creature that may take many forms across its lifetime. I strive to find its true identity every week.]

The Case of the Unfriendly QR Code

Surfing around Facebook this evening, I was invited to “Like” a page that, as Facebook often does, has nothing to do with my interests I’ve expressed in my profile or other Pages I’ve liked. The page was for the Washington Redskins — I am not a football fan (baseball is my game). Nevertheless, the Page thumbnail caught my eye, so I clicked it to give it some consideration before I dismissed the invitation entirely.

What caught my attention was the QR code incorporated into the main image of the page. The text in the image implies that the visitor can scan the QR code to get more information about club seats. However. its not very clear what is offered if/when the visitor scans it. There’s a website listed in the image, apparently to get the scanner app on one’s phone. But again, not very clear, especially to someone who is experiencing a QR code for the first time.

There are a few flaws in the use of this QR code application. To not overly pick on the Redskins, I’ll try to be gentle(!):

1. On or near the QR code, there is no indication of what is gained by scanning the QR code. To be user-friendly, you need to clearly specify that there will be a unique or exclusive value gained by scanning the code. The sheer novelty of scanning a QR code just to see how it works will only take you so far. And if you disappoint the person scanning it, by offering little more than the novelty of scanning it, you’ve risked losing some respect and loyalty.

2. The QR code itself has to be one that is scannable by the most common and popular scanner apps. I scanned this particular code with my Droid, neither the app that came with the Droid, nor the Neoreader app I downloaded to my phone a few months ago, could read this QR code. If your code can’t be read on the first try, very few people will be persistent enough to keep trying. The Redskins page has a QR code reader site listed on the image, yet when I go there I discover that it’s ONLY for iPhones and iPod Touches. Ouch! Kind of useless for my Droid!

3. At this point, while I appreciate the effort of the Redskins using a QR code on their Facebook page, it’s really too much work to get the user experience that they are trying to offer. So, for the average visitor to their Facebook page, it’s a point of frustration that we (I) can’t see what is offered. There’s no alternate way to get the experience, or find the destination, of the QR code. That’s their third flaw: Not giving people a way to experience the QR code, even if, going in, they need to download a reader, is not being fan friendly.

The bottom line with QR codes, for those advertisers and marketers using them in the U.S. (we are lagging behind other countries in the effective use of QR codes), is that most have a long way to go in learning how to most effectively use them. There’s many great examples of QR code marketing, but this particular case is exemplary of an unfriendly QR code. Marketers need to test and re-test the QR code experience themselves before they make it live to their audience. That testing, and looking at the experience from the user’s point of view, would help them catch some of the flaws like the ones seen in this example.

Social Media for B2B: What are the Prime Values?

We’ve been asked, more than once and maybe even more than 100 times, what can a company in the B2B arena get out of social media. This post isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of benefits, but there are at least a few that are worth mentioning with some detail. In a world where the nay-sayers’ voices about social media for business tend to get quite a bit of attention, it’s a pleasure to be able to share some of the unique values that exist for B2B marketers today.

1. Listen to the Voice of the Customer: With online communities or portals, in particular, you can create a venue where your customers can share pros, cons, new product feedback and feature requests with you. Look at it as a lab for generating consumer feedback about your products and services. You have to be willing to be transparent and accept the negative, but in the end you will have shown your customers you care about their needs, are listening, and that outreach may just pay big dividends when it comes time for them to choose between Competitor X and you, because you will have shown them that their needs are your top priority. American Express created its “Open Forum” and “Idea Hub” to serve small business clients, for example. At the very least, what is the harm in letting your consumers tell you what they think of you?
2. Identify Leads and Potential Partners: It’s true that you can’t count on seeing a ton of new business from your participation in social media. But what CAN you count on? If you look at social media as just one channel in your marketing mix, contributing to the end goal of increasing brand awareness and sales, then you won’t expect an unreasonable level of return on your social activities and you won’t get down on it before it’s had a chance to make an impact. Sales leads will come. There’s just no doubt about that if you start with a social media strategy that makes sense for your business, where all the participants in your company know their role and do it well. Over time, the connections you’ll make in the social spheres will far, far outweigh the quantity and quality of the sporadic offline connections you make. You’ll be able to size them up by what they do and say on Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on, and be better able to make that sales pitch or partnership request with more knowledge about who they are and what they might need from you.
3. Outwit, Outplay, Outlast: This last point is pretty clear-cut: If you are not at the dinner table, how will you see what there is to eat, how will you get to choose what’s on your plate, and how will you fill your belly with the things that will sustain you? As a B2B company who is an active, strategic participant in social media, you have the ability to see what your competition is doing, and Outwit them by doing “it” better or in a creative way; You can Outplay them for connections to the best target consumers in your market, and you can Outlast your competitors by staying relevant with daily social interactions with the consumers you serve. It comes down to Trust. Aren’t you more willing to trust a company that is willing to engage in dialog with you – outside of the other more formal methods of marketing?

For some marketers, it’s easier to discount the values of social media for B2B companies, instead resting on traditional marketing tactics that maybe have worked for them before. For more and more B2B marketers, though, the signs are pointing to getting involved in some form of social media strategy that fits their business. No one says that everyone has to be on Twitter or Facebook. But you do need to be where your customers and prospective customers are.