After reading Peter’s posts today ”The difference between a web site and a blog” and his subsequent correction, ”I goofed,” I feel compelled to riff a bit and share a story about a face-to-face interview I had with a local attorney and business owner on the same subject:  “What makes a blog different?”

For some time now I’ve felt that even those positioning themselves as blog consultants/experts are still feeling their way around figuring all this stuff out.  How to define it, how to measure it, how to sell it.

It occured to me that it’s hard to “sell” a busy business person on the idea of blogging unless they allow you the time to wade through various definitions—doubly hard if you don’t have firm definitions yourself.  So I decided that I’d try an experiment—I’d meet with this business person that I felt would benefit from blogging and pitch him face to face.  Surely if I could have a conversation and demonstrate this powerful and exciting tool, I’d be able to sell it!

But then I realized how huge the task was to prepare for this meeting.  Not only my pitch and my various definitions—but I’d have to take a long hard look at his industry, his competition, and what they are doing with blogging to show examples of measurable success.

And therein lies the key to our problem as consultants:  there are very few case studies on business blogs, so do we really have strong evidence to present to potential clients?  For me anyway, it’s still “I have this feeling that this could be HUGE!” but that’s about it.

So I purposefully went into that meeting unprepared.  I thought hell, I’ll give him the nuts and bolts and ask him what he feels the potential of blogging might be.  I walked in and his first comment was, “(My partner) was just reading this article on blogging in Fast Company, it was really exciting.” (Score!)

We chit-chatted for awhile about what a blog is, and I stumbled around a few key features:

1.  Blogs are chronological, and provide a means of on-going communication via the web.
2.  They are not written in “marketingese”—the langugage is more informal, more conversational
3.  They provide an option for feedback with comments and trackbacks, though these are not always utilized
3.  They are inexpensive to set up

Then I did something uncharacteristic of an “expert” making a pitch; I said, “I’ll be honest with you.  I’ve been emersed in blogging for a year now, absorbing all I can learn about the subject ... but I can’t fully articulate the benefits you might gain because I frankly don’t yet know myself.  I am here today to ask you, as a business person, what you feel the possibilities might be.”

And so I showed him a few blogs that I felt were good examples of people in his industry using blogs.  Then, in general terms, together we discussed various ways in which blogs might be beneficial.  Being a savvy business person, his reaction was just as I expected—he began to free-flow ideas about how a blog could be useful to him:  in his law practice, in his business associations, in his retail business and for his band (he moonlights as a percussionist).

Before I left, he shot off an email to one of his colleagues and said, “We need to get started on a blog.”

The lesson I learned in this meeting is that we don’t have to have all the answers.  If we recognize that we’re still on the verge of understanding, we can engage our customers in the conversation.  I know more than most, so I can get them started in thinking about the possibilties.  But just like blogs—they are personal.  They are the author’s voice.  So in some way, perhaps they should have a say in defining what makes a blog different.