Comments on: Why Conversation, not Content, is King

By: » Business Blogs Are Not For Selling. GAby Menta

» Business Blogs Are Not For Selling. GAby Menta — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:35:12 +0000

[...] Novak over at WordSpring wrote a great post Tuesday on the merits of content versus conversation. As the word count on the comment I began to leave for her continued to grow, I realized I just [...]

By: Catherine Novak

Catherine Novak — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:41:53 +0000

That’s the beauty of social media, isn’t it? We can’t have this kind of back and forth dialogue in a company (or Christmas) newsletter. I like your comment “your post is not your post” (emphasis mine) – just like your conversation is not your conversation. This is something we do together. Thanks for the epiphany, Harriet. Thanks also to Daniel, and to my “real life” friend Larry, whom I haven’t had a verbal conversation with in a long time.

By: harrietglynn

harrietglynn — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 20:05:08 +0000

A fellow arts/social media lover and I have started doing weekly podcasts. Everytime, we do one, I have a weird little ephinany. First one being that because we are having a free-from conversation, I’m able to have these little ah ha moments. On the last “cast,” we talked about blogging and how some people are afraid they have nothing to say, or their post won’t be good enough etc. And I said, well actually, your post is not your post. Your post is a conversation starter, which is exapanded by people responding and so on. I am SO happy that Conversation is King (or perhaps Queen given the prominence of women in this medium) now. Much livelier and much more interesting!

By: Daniel Hindin

Daniel Hindin — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:38:47 +0000

Hi, Catherine! I hope you don’t mind me dropping a link, but, as I said I might, I wrote a blog post inspired by this one, and I thought you’d be interested to read it. You can find it here:

http://www.spinsucks.com/communication/content-as-conversation-on-your-business-blog/

I’d love to hear what you think. You really have created a conversation here. Thank you for that!

By: Content As Conversation On Your Business Blog | The Fight Against Destructive Spin

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:17:57 +0000

By: Larry Messaros

Larry Messaros — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:25:24 +0000

Catherine, I do agree with you and Daniel, I have a different thought on the usefulness. As much as I would like to drive lots of business to the coffee shop, I use blogging and social websites more to keep in touch with friends, family and acquaintances. My Mom was the social person in the family, always keeping in touch with friends and family through letters and phone calls. The problem is all of the information comes at once, and it can be difficult to retain. I never did get the bug of regular letter writing from my Mom. After a few lines of writing, my lines would start sloping, and my writing would get sloppier and writing a cohesive letter that made sense usually required a couple of rewrites! Enter the desktop computer era and I could write to my hearts content, cut, paste, and delete, and have a finished letter that was readable in a matter of minutes! Even though letter writing became legible, I reserved the letter for our once-a-year mail out with our Christmas cards. At least the rest of our friends and relatives would know what we were up to. With the advent of social media, it is much easier to get snippets of information regularly and retain that info (and even pass it on) than the old letter writing days. Keeping track of family (some I have never met) and friends (some I hadn’t seen or talked to in 20 years) has been really interesting and with the small bits of information it is easy to follow these social relationships.

I think that Quality should beat out quantity no matter what we do. Facebook Friends and Twitter followers should be about quality, but too often quantity seems to be the deciding factor if a person is successful. I don’t have a lot of people reading my blog. Even though I try to write regularly on my blog and a couple other blog/websites that I maintain, I am mostly trying out new and different WordPress features on my site before using them on other sites! Not that I mind having only a few followers, as I have been practising with WordPress designs and trying to have my writing make sense. At some point in time I will get serious with my writing, but for now I am happy with learning about WordPress and polishing my writing skills.

By: Catherine Novak

Catherine Novak — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:50:41 +0000

Thanks, Daniel!
Love the long comment, actually. Feel free to quote me in your blog post – I’ll do my best to add to the conversation by leaving a comment of my own .

By: Daniel Hindin

Daniel Hindin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:19:40 +0000

Catherine, this is a fantastic post and captures what I think blogging is all about. When people slap up content on their blogs every day like it’s nothing, readers treat it accordingly — like, well, it’s nothing.

Whether it’s for business or pleasure, I think the goal of content should ultimately be the same — for conversation, just as you say. Because even if you’re trying to sell, blogging is no place for a hard sell. The likelihood of writing one post directly leading to a new client is slim to none. It’s about creating conversation, a place for people to congregate, a place where people feel comfortable sharing their own views.

If someone feels comfortable conversing with you, well, then when the time comes that they need services that you offer, they don’t have to think very long about who to turn to.

Good content will be appreciated for maybe a few hours after it’s digested. Good conversation will be appreciated over the long haul, because while a good piece of content ends with the last sentence, a good conversation never has to.

I hope you don’t mind the long comment, Catherine, but you just may have provided the spark for a blog post of my own! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!