10:44 AM -:- Posted by Allen    

You can lead a horse to a blog...

...but you can't make him blog: he has to want to blog!

Doug Kenline is a blog fanatic. That's a good thing.

He sets up blogs for people without asking them, and then leans on them to start blogging. That's a good and a bad thing.

It's bad for a couple of reasons. First, it's not for Doug to tell people what to do or how to do it. Imagine the trouble we'd all be in if people in the government thought in general the way Doug does about this.

Second, Doug is not telling these people why they should blog. He's telling them why he wants them to blog, but that's the worst sales technique on the planet: buy this because I want you to!

Yes, this is about sales. Doug is asking people to spend something: time. He needs to explain the benefits. And it can't just be a bunch of promises; today's buyers are too sophisticated for that. They check references, and in this case, that means you have to tell them something that bears fruit.

Most people on the net who have important things to say are already saying it through subscription lists and newsletters. Jon Rappoport does it though his website, possibly one of the original web-logs.

The people who have mailing lists and newsletters going out to thousands of interested proactively opted-in people are not going to see any value to a blog that just sits there waiting to be noticed by someone every couple of days. And they're not going to bother with any complicated or involved efforts to promote their blog, either. So Doug, you'll have to show them how that's not the way that it is.

The thing is, you can't just add something to someone's job description without their consent, and they're not going to add it themselves without first discovering their own interest and reasons.

That's the salesperson's job: help the person find those two things, and she'll do it.

For her own reasons, on her own initiative.

And that's a really good thing.