Like so many of you who are reading this, I am an entrepreneur who happens to conduct business entirely over the web. Like so many of you, I have created a blog in an attempt to give visitors an insight into my business and myself. Why are we doing this? Perhaps I should rephrase that question.
Have you ever told someone who has a tradition job what you do and you either get a blank stare or they ask you if you don’t miss going to work? Most of us who have an online business have had a traditional job so we should understand where they are coming from. People who work in traditional jobs typically have a job title. Job titles are important, and a cleaver retention tool, because a job title gives someone status. People’s status is tied to the company they work for. “I’m George and I’m the senior vice president of marketing for Titus Distributors.” Being able to make such a statement is an important part of people’s identities.
As an self-employed entrepreneur, I do not have a job title. I have an elevator speech to explain what I do and give the benefits of what I do in 30 seconds or less to begin the rapport building process with someone. To help bridge this gap between the online and offline world and even with other online entrepreneurs, we build blogs to give someone an inside peek at our business and ourselves.
A common belief that we entrepreneurs try to provide this snapshot into our business and ourselves is the web has evolved into something called Web 2.0. Web 2.0 interactive applications such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and hundreds of others enable us to market to build relationships and our brand. This belief is only partially true. Here is an observation that I have made by visiting other blogs, including blogs created by some well known people in our online entrepreneurial world.
I have observed that blog posts that receive the most comments reveal something of a personal nature, even if the information provided is intertwined with a message about our business. People want to know not only what we do but who we are. If we are successful in accomplishing this seemly easy task, we have status.