Since our coffeehouse was mentioned on Business Week's Blogspotting, I've been spending some time over there. Blogspotting is a Business Week blog that regularly calls out interesting blogs and blogging trends. I use it mostly to get a gauge on what's working for other businesses when consulting on blog projects.
Which brings me to this somewhat disappointing post (and here). About three weeks ago, Catalyst Design Group released a usability study on blogs (actually one weblog) that pointed to a conclusion that "normal" people don't understand a lot about the features of a typical blog.
The focus of the study was another Business Week blog on investing, called "Well Spent". The full Catalyst usability report (pdf file) can be found here.
To sum up the report's findings:
- people don't know when they're on a blog
- people don't know what to expect from a blog
- people don't understand what happens to their comments
- people don't understand trackbacks at all
- people don't understand RSS
- people think blogging is really only understood by bloggers
Granted, this study only followed nine people looking at one site. But the nine people were relative tech-savvy. And the site being reviewed was mainstream. Interpreting this data is not unlike interpreting a focus group. It's relevant, but really only leads to asking other questions in a deeper study.
I'm looking at several requests for assistance on building blogs right now (including non-trade show projects). Most are in markets where there is no "blogging legacy". The blogs that may be built would be the first (or second) in their respective areas of influence. Which essentially means no expectations of trackbacks (since only other bloggers can use this feature), limited user knowledge of RSS (we'd have to educate markets on how to get our posts read on MyYahoo!, MyMSN and MyAOL, etc.), and we're probably looking at a long ramp-up before actual conversations happen via comments. Not to mention explaining the concept to potential contributors who would provide much of the industry-related content for very little (if any) compensation.
After reading something like this, you might expect companies that sell blogs to go into clinical depression. But that won't happen. Few "normal" people understood the web either when it first came out. Nobody wanted to put in credit card information to buy anything. But that all changed in the matter of a few years. Now nobody thinks about it (except when credit data aggregators make the news for security breaches). And the companies that survived the inevitable market shakeout are now worth tens of millions, if not billions. The dynamics of Web 2.0 will probably give us more of the same and those who are still around six, seven or ten years from now will have become formidable companies.
Still, I'm happy I don't rely on blogs for a living. Every proposal I've received for blog consulting has been unsolicited (save one). And I'm upfront with people who ask what revenue returns they can expect to see. There are no guarantees, especially in markets where you're the first blog out there. Your guess is probably as valid as mine. Which doesn't exactly build confidence in the format. But it would be foolhardy for me to promise anything. There aren't many blogs out there promoting specific businesses that have a track record of meaningful financial impact.
Which brings me back to the coffeehouse.
Stephen Baker of Blogspotting is doing a follow-up on small business blogs for an article that will appear in BW's "Small Biz" magazine in a couple of weeks. He asked me how and why I started the blog for Aldo Coffee Co. And I told him it was simply a matter of convenience and cost. I've owned (and paid for) websites in the past, had been blogging for three years, knew what I needed from a content management system and most important, knew what I could afford. So it was easy for me to use a TypePad blog as the actual website for the coffeehouse.
Based on informal conversations and feedback, I'd guess that 90% of our customers have absolutely no idea they're actually looking at a blog when they come to our site. All they know is that when they go to the site there are a bunch of links that sort of look like a regular website. And magically, the content that's in the middle of the screen changes every day, which they think is novel.
But because we're in a blog format we get some phenomenal results on fairly basic search strings related to the coffee and food products we offer without spending a dime on search engine optimization. We've developed stickiness. We have established a regular readership that visits several times a week. We're linked with our local blog community which drives traffic. And we're mentioned on Business Week - soon to be twice.
None of that would have happened had we opted to just do a "regular" website or even an online forum. It's because we're a blog. And there's something about that word and that format that has the power to create interest.
For right now, maybe that's enough.
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