Blogs Are For People Who Love People

Amazing, how you can find great business advice in the most unlikely places!  As part of my reading to keep my Certified Financial Planner credentials current, I subscribe to all manner of journals about insurance, investments, and employee benefits. In the August 2008 issue of Employee Benefit Advisor, there was an article discussing avatars.  (This is so interesting!) Avatars are computer-generated characters, and these avatars are being integrated into employers’ communication with their employees about their benefit plans.  Avatars become virtual staff members, helping employees enroll in health benefit programs and answering employees’ questions about their benefits.

Here’s the part that is so relevant to my work as a professional ghost blogger: A study  conducted at Stanford University found that employees’ interaction with these avatars (remember, these are basically cartoon people!) was sufficiently human-like that people responded online in ways that mirror social interactions in real life.  The conclusion was that the perceived “realness” of these human interactions may lead avatars to succeed where other self-service efforts have failed.  One of the authors of the Stanford study wrote, “People naturally seek out other people rather than a manual or other resource.”

In Creating Buzz With Blogs, veteran business technology consultant Ted Demopoulos explains, “Blogs create buzz because people will feel like they know you, and people like to do business with people they know.”  Remember the avatars? They succeed because they’re like people.  Blogs represent people, people talking to people. Maybe Barbra Streisand was apparently onto something when she sang about people who love people being the luckiest people in the world. Blogging’s the business manifestation of that.