Go read Chris Brogan’s recent blog post titledĀ What I Told the Bloggers at Social Media Marketing World.
The article mostly presents some ideas on the current state of business blogging (that’s sorta what we do). I love this quote:
Blogging for business is about converting attention to value. You have to earn the attention, and then you have to deliver that attention to a potential opportunity to drive value.
I like it so much that I’m writing a whole blog post about it. Some thoughts:
“Blogging for business…” When you write a blog post for your library, you are blogging for business. Blogging for your organization. It means you have to develop a reason behind what you write. Which moves us to the next point.
“… is about converting attention to value.” Yes, there’s a reason we blog for our libraries. It’s not because we are good people, or because we like to share. There needs to be a more strategic reason to do it, or it’s really not worth anyone’s time. So keep reading …
“Earn the attention.” This idea isn’t all that hard. To gain attention, do this: write well, write in an easily readable, conversational style. And share stuff your customers are actually interested in.
Oh, and actually share it somewhere (most likely on your Facebook Page – wherever you have a large gathering of customers).
“Deliver that attention to a potential opportunity to drive value.” Huh? Another way to say that is to move readers to a next step. After reading, what do you want the reader to do next? On a library blog, that next step could be any number of things, including:
- check something out
- visit the building
- attend an event or class
- find out something new about the library (i.e, “we have ebooks!”)
- register for something
- etc.
We are not businesses, so we don’t sell stuff. But it’s easy enough to translate that idea of “delivering value” or “selling stuff” to what we do as libraries. The “value” we deliver is information, knowledge, learning, and improving people’s lives.
Want to improve your library’s blog? Set some strategies and goalsĀ for your blog, deliver a next step in everything you do, and start measuring your successes.
image by Reuben Ingber