Helping Clients Get Past Blogaphobia

Enthusiasm Can Kill

Just today I wrote an email to a potential client I met with two weeks ago. In it I wrote this phrase I know my enthusiasm can be huge. We’d gotten into a conversation about blogs and how they were changing the world.

I wish that I had read the article I found exploring later that afternoon. It’s a piece by Anil Dash at Six Apart News called How to keep blogs from scaring the hell out of people. It’s just packed with truths.

We Live Blogs

We who blog, learn blogging like folks who move to a foreign country learn a new language and culture — by immersion. The people that we talk to regularly are having the same experience as we are. They know the sense of community. They know the personal and professional growth that comes from putting things on the Internet rather than always taking things off. They know, as we do, that not every blog is a whiny diary or some sort of political flame war.

What Anil points out is that the people we meet who aren’t blogging have heard the stories without benefit our experiences. Pick the wrong example and we can scare the pants off the exact people we’re trying to invite.

Anil’s Advice

Anil offers a few pointers to keep in mind when we’re talking to a possible blogaphobic — someone who believes that blogs might not be a good thing.

Blogs are technology that is tested, tried, and true.
Blogs integrate well with existing technology.
Blogs are as mobile as a cell phone and used around the world.
Blogs can start small and grow as comfort levels grow.

Whether it’s your boss, a new client, or a member of your family, a thoughtful approach is going to go a long way to easing phobias and giving your conversation a chance.

My Client

I’m lucky. I know the man I was speaking to has lots of room to think and doesn’t scare easily. I’ll approach him again, show him a few blogs — one by a Fortune 500 company CEO, Jonathan Schwartz of SunMicrosystems,, one by a modern philosopher, Oleg Koefoed,, and a post I wrote about first graders Ms. Cassidy’s first grade class.

Then maybe we’ll talk about what other companies are doing with internal blogs to improve communication. My client knows a technology worth exploring when he sees it.

How do you ease customer fears about blogging?

–ME “Liz” Strauss