Building a business, blogging and a lack of passion

I was talking with a friend of mine today and he described a situation where he was trying to help a client understand that based on her business model; she needed to be the one to blog for her business. She replied; “I don’t have much content and was hoping you could blog for us.”. This was after a conversation last week where she shared with him that she was really passionate about teaching underprivileged children. She was now talking to him about corporate education.

Now . . . there are so many problems with this story, it’s hard to know where to start. So I’ll start with the first issue I heard when he was sharing this story on the phone.

“I don’t have much content . . .” – If you don’t have content than you may be in wrong business. It’s important to remember that this is the founder. The person who is supposed to be the most passionate about the business. I bet she has plenty to say about teaching children. When my friend asked her about why she wasn’t going to teach underprivileged children like she wanted to, she told him that there “was no money in it”. At the risk of sounding like a self-help guru – if you do what you love; the money will follow. No one gets rich doing something they hate. You have to be passionate about it.

” . . . was hoping could blog for us.” – Uh. My friend is a social media strategist. Not a tactician. I don’t know why people think they can get strategy and tactics in one person. Also, when it comes to blogging  and interaction/deep relationships are your goal, the SME has to be the one talking; not some intern. For businesses, it’s best to think of blogging as a type of marketing. A social media strategist will tell you where you should be participating within the social landscape and provide a framework to operate within. A tactician will be the one actually blogging. Again, the only person qualified to do the actual blogging is someone familiar with the market; if you want to take full advantage of blogging. For education, you’ll need to develop the deepest online relationships possible and for blogging, it’s interaction. Blogging can be used to:

1. Increase search engine ranking. By constantly dumping content relevant to your business into your site, your search engine rankings will improve.
2. Distribution (posts without comments) in a PR like manner. Improves search engine rankings and shares information with those that follow. It’s still broadcast and not as effective at interaction.
3. Interaction – allowing those that follow you to interact with you via comments on your posts. This is the deepest blog-centric relationship you can have online and is a natural for educators. Not only does she not understand the strategy vs. tactics, she doesn’t understand what blogging could do for her.

My friend is in the process of writing her a very professional, very polite email letting her know that she needs to do what she is most passionate about  and that will solve 90% of her problems right out of that gate. I’ll let you know what she says.