Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Dear Greg,

Those terms "brand expansion", and "thought leadership" and "competitive differentiation"?

Know what they mean?

At worst, they mean bugger all, and if we completely undress the emperor, they're utter bullshit.

And at best? Well, they, and all the other terms you mentioned
all mean one thing: how can we create better relationships with readers?

Screw strategy! Write a story. Tell a tale. Create a narrative. Bring people in to your world.

Without a relationship and a context, there's no reason to read. And without a story teller and an audience there's no relationship.

Where there are better relationships, there is better understanding and less ambiguity. And where there is less ambiguity, there is more clarity and greater belief—all of which lead to greater trust, more likability, and a tighter bond.

The only differences between blogging and the telling of stories around a campfire is the technology that connects the teller and the listener and the locations of the two.

That's it.

Forget strategies, objectives, and goals. Your reader isn't interested and besides, you're NOT waging a war here, you're building a readership.

So instead, put yourself in your reader's shoes and ask questions as if you were those people.

What keeps them awake at night?
Who do they fear?
When where they last happy?
Are they sick of hearing about the recession?
Are they proud of their parents, kids, siblings?
Where do they want to be five years from now?
Where would they live is money was not an issue?
Which movie sums up their life?

And so on.

Strategies, objectives, and goals—all they do is tell people where to go when what people really need are ROADS to take them somewhere new, fresh, and exciting. Those people need BRIDGES to help them cross to another shore, or to another side, and they need LOCKS to float their narrowboat up to a higher level, or down to a lower one.

Don't just sit there, start building!

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Greg, the terms you ask about suggest you are in a corporate environment and have to justify? Or have you come across a planning methodology for starting a blog? Either way, the terms evidence an End-Means approach. That is, the blog is understood to be instrumental to some ultimate purpose. Know the purpose and the means become evident and lock-step.

Gary, above, calls this "waging a war" -- a campaign. Clearly he advocates a much different goal of building relationships and bonding with readers. Nevertheless, blogging is still a means to an end as Gary writes: "Screw strategy! Write a story. Tell a tale. Create a narrative. Bring people in to your world." Not as instrumental sounding nor logically sequenced yet just as goal oriented and tactical.

I just picked up Garr Reynolds' book "presentationzen." I think that the aptitudes he writes about are great directional criteria: Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. These can be the orientation of a blog in the "Conceptual Age." Dwelling with these while aspiring to be authentic seems more sustainable than outcomes-based thinking for blog discourse.

Stephen Bath
North Vancouver, BC, Canada

Here's an example:

My blogging goal is to share my expertise on a regular basis with interested readers.

My objective is to have 1000 new people subscribe to my blog each month.

My strategy is to ensure what I'm writing about is something that lots of people are searching for and are likely to view me as someone worth reading.

My tactic is to use keywords that my audience is already searching for, cross post my blog on other well-read blogs, and use social bookmarking to try to build a viral effect.