internet userland

Goodbye, “Small World” of phones, websites and email. Hello, “Even Smaller World” - now with one less degree of separation. Starting a blog means one more thing on my ‘to do’ list, but I’ve learned a lot from other people’s blogs and I want to give it a shot.

From the About page: The purpose for this blog is to make the Internet a little less murky for anyone who is trying to start, grow or reinvent a business online.

The topics will include technology, culture and business. I will probably discuss my projects (”websites and online applications for small businesses“), as well as my experience of being in business for myself. I do not intend to glamorize it. It’s been a real challenge, but there are many benefits and I want to encourage and support anyone who is doing it, or thinking of doing it. This is what I do one-on-one, on the phone, in email and in person and it will be interesting to see how it translates to a different medium.

I am always somewhat surprised when I meet business owners who are not reading any blogs and don’t have any idea why they should. They don’t know if their competitors are blogging, what messages they are putting out, or how customer expectations may be changing. They simply have no opinion. How can this be good?

I understand the resistance to putting ‘one more thing on the To Do list’, but I suspect there is more going on than just that. According to service marketing guru, Harry Beckwith, service businesses often have the mistaken belief that, when it comes right down to it, there is very little difference between them and the competition. If that is the prevailing belief, any effort to differentiate will be seen as a waste of time. Wishful thinking is believing that all the market needs to know is the price and the phone number.

Let’s say “goodbye” to the small world of wishful thinking. If service businesses are not clear on how and why they are unique, then blogging may be just the homework they need. Until we discover the ability to cultivate our unique competitiveness, anything we do will be less effective than it could be.

Blogs can shrink the distance between your business and your next customer. Blogs are cheap and easy to set up, but it is not cheap and easy to write something worth reading. The industry term for this effort is “content development” – just to make sure everyone knows how important and tedious it is. If it is tedious to write, it will probably be tedious to read. If all I were to do on this blog is write about how great my work is, and why everyone should hire me, it would be a study in tedium. I get tired just thinking about it.

Another stumbling block for me was topic saturation and the “me too” syndrome. The Blogosphere is teaming with blogs on the Internet, web sites and online marketing. I am easily bored by posts on popular topics if I get the feeling that the publishers feel duty-bound to weigh in with their opinion. Here’s an opinion: it is never anyone’s “duty” to share their opinion.

The only thing that will work for me is to write about stuff I think is interesting, useful and unusual.

If you have found this interesting, useful or unusual, please subscribe with the little orange buttons in the upper right. The other links on the right are my blog subscriptions at Bloglines. If you don’t have a feedreader, check it out. It’s a wonderful tool (and free).