Don’ts For Blogs: Too Much, Too Fast, Too Self-Conscious

Indianapolis Business Journal technology columnist Tim Altom isn’t a fan of "Power Point fashionistas" who use all the animation trickery the program can provide.  "Too much, too fast, too self-conscious" is how he describes many of the presentations he’s had to sit through.

I couldn’t agree more, as I brought out in "Blogs, Like PowerPoint Presentations, Can Be Boons or Banes". I suggested thinking of each blog post as one slide in a PowerPoint.

Even Robert Gaskins, co-creator of PowerPoint, explains that the technology was never intended for showing an entire proposal – just a quick summary, and that relationship is precisely applicable to a business’ blog posts relative to the corporate website.

Business bloggers would do well to pay heed to several of Altom’s suggestions about effective use of Power Point slides:

1.   Slides should be used to set the stage for a conversation…Slides.work fine if they’re meant only to cue and remind.
Blog posts can cue and remind as well, with each post focused on just one new piece of information, a unique approach to a subject, an anecdote, a myth busted or a problem solved.

2.   Altom put together charts from a client’s own data, but in ways the client had not thought of, revealing things the customer hadn’t seen before.
One excellent use of a business blog post is to do the same, presenting a new approach to familiar information.

3.   Most speeches can do just fine without slides. But there are occasions when you’re not able to dialogue…
In fact, blogging for business is exactly such an "occasion". Pull marketing is all about attracting attention from the right kind of strangers, those unaware of the name of your business, who arrive at your blog because they are searching for something that relates to what you do. The dialogue cannot begin until those strangers find you online. 
 

In online marketing, then, what you cannot do is follow Altom’s ideal of "teaching naked", i.e. without technology).  You can, on the other hand, avoid Altom’s Power Point "Don’ts".

• Too much: (keep blog posts short and focused on one idea)
• Too fast: (keep posts conversational and informal in tone)
• Too self-conscious: (keep it about them and their needs, yet don’t be reluctant       to include calls to action in your blog posts)

Power blog posts can be the best PowerPoint slides of all!