Of actionable items and a touch of hypocrisy
With our agency blog kicking off, I’ve been trying to watch webinars and talks in my free time. This is what usually gets me revved up on a subject and then I am inspired to write about it. I’ve been having a problem though. Even though I sit down to watch a lot of webinars, I haven’t been making it past ten minutes in a lot of cases. It’s not that the webinars are bad. In fact, in a lot of cases the speaker is saying things that are perfectly interesting. It’s just, well, I don’t have a whole ton of time, and as nice as stories and anecdotes can be, if you don’t start telling me what I’m going to get out of your presentation, I’m moving on.
This all makes perfect sense in the abstract, and in fact I was going to write a post advising you to make sure you establish early on what people can expect to take away from your presentation. But then I realized a tidbit of a problem.
As a blogger, I’m doing the exact same thing as those webinar presenters. In fact, most of my blog posts don’t really provide you with any actionable items. There is not usually something you can *do* after reading one of my posts. There’s nothing you can take to your boss or your peers and say, “Hey guys, Margie suggested this in her blog post and I think we should try it.” I’m starting to wonder if that’s a problem. After all, your time is just as short as mine – maybe even shorter. Although I try to be entertaining and although we have good conversations here, I’m not really living by my own code. Sadly, that makes me a bit of a hypocrite. Now that is a label I REALLY don’t like.
On the other hand…
Maybe blogging is a different kind of animal from a webinar. A webinar is usually an investment of 45 minutes to an hour. Most of my posts don’t represent that kind of a time investment. Maybe people have more expectations from a webinar. I still read and enjoy blog posts that don’t necessarily offer actionable items. I’m not as picky. But the posts that DO give me something to do or a new way of looking at things – those are the ones I always wish I had written.
What do you make of this?
What do you expect when you come here or when you go to another blog site? Are you finding that your expectations are changing?
I certainly feel like I can’t rightly fault other bloggers or webinar presenters for doing something I do myself all of the darned time, so I am feeling like I’m in a bit of a pickle. Writing about Queen Elizabeth I is all well and good, but is it really valuable?
Weigh in!
I’ve written a new e-book called The ABCs of Marketing Myths. You can read about it here!
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All I know is your posts are very readable start to finish; that’s all I need. If you want to tell me how I can get better hair, win a new car, lose 10 lbs I guess I’m ok with that, just keep it in your own readable way.
@bdorman264 Thanks Bill. I will work on those other portions of knowledge for you 🙂
Margie,
I read your stuff because I value your unique perspective regarding this social media realm. You speak from experience, Ma’am and you educate people like me who are relatively new to this sphere.
I’ve watched less than 10 webinars and honestly walk away thinking each was an extended version of what I already knew from reading that person’s blog. I realize the effectiveness and know they are great sales tools and a solid way to build a list, but I’ve yet to see a really, really good one. Maybe I’m watching all the wrong people 😉
@Craig McBreen Shut up BlogWorld; you lost the newbie tag a long time ago, who you trying to fool you clown?
You know I luv ya B’more, right?
@Craig McBreen The most disappointing webinar experience I had was realizing that the person was basically just summarizing their book, literally chapter by chapter. The content did not really have much to do with the title, and the only reason I wasn’t more mad is that the webinar was free. Had I paid I likely would have blogged about it. That’s why I try really hard to avoid the “repurposing” thing that so many people do with their content. When I worked on my e-book I stopped my blog series so that at least a dozen of the pieces would be 100% brand new, and I altered the content that was already available here.
I think you need to respect peoples’ time whatever you’re doing – I just wonder if there’s a “usefulness” spectrum for blog posts.
I so relate to this. Webinars take way too much time. I’m all for reading and moving on. Thanks for your post.
@herbalifeinquiry Good to know. Thanks for weighing in! 🙂
Honestly, Margie, we do the same thing with blogs that we do with webinars. We read a couple paragraphs and decide from there if we’re hooked or if we’ve already wasted too much time. The difference is it’s so much easier to scan a blog than it is a webinar. That’s why I always look at the slides or notes (which better be included!) to a webinar first.
That said, once we commit to a webinar, in order to get anything out of it we have to Pay Attention. And we have to pay out the nose compared to the skimpy period of time we spend on a blog post, between tweeting, emailing, answering the phone, texting a message… And then some webinars are live, so you can’t rewind… so yes, if I choose to listen to a webinar, it has to be about something I know next to nothing about but feel I Really Need To Know, in order to keep me listening. And yet I still feel my time was wasted after the majority I’ve listened to.
@ShakirahDawud Those are great points, Shakirah, but I wonder how much I/we miss in trying to judge something based on the slides or based on a blog title or the first paragraph. Often times the first paragraphs of my blog posts sort of set the stage. If my posts are judged by that measuring stick, heck, nobody would learn hardly anything here. But that’s part of my style. Maybe a presenter’s style isn’t in the design of the slides or in the writing of the abstract but in the actual presentation. Maybe our cultural ADD is costing us in these regards.
I think your post are great Margie. Thought provocation is GOOD!
@kevjkirkpatrick Well thanks, sir 🙂
Good point from @ShakirahDawud , blogs can be skimmed. What I appreciate most about your posts, and a few other folks, is that they are NOT directly actionable, but they are thought provoking. They plant a seed, like this one does.
Seed: Is making someone stop and think enough, or do you need to tell them the answer too? Does the answer to that change depending on the relationship you already have with them?
I don’t need a 60 minute webcast to spark a thought, if I have 60 minutes to give, then I don’t have any time after to think! But for a blog, there is ample room for both styles.
My $0.02 in reply. 🙂
@Wittlake Hmm, that’s a very interesting 2 cents, I might add. So maybe blogs, being more a part of Web 2.0, set the expectation that some back-and-forth is okay. You don’t necessarily need to be given a roadmap because you can ask the blogger questions and (hopefully) he or she will answer. The expectations with a webinar may be skewed more towards the, “I’d better walk away with something useful given my investment of time.” That’s an interesting nugget indeed 🙂
I think the sphere of blogging is full of fluff. I keep reading 300 word+ posts that ultimately do not tell me anything new. Or they bury their point with buzzwords, which is like not having no point at all. While these posts are probably easier for most to digest, they do nothing for me.
I appreciate your insights from behind the marketing curtain. My education in this regard is informal. So I am eager to hear thoughts from those who work in the industry day in and day out. It gives me some sense of what I am getting myself into if I can get hired in the field full time.
I think actionable is one of those buzzwords too. I looked up the definition the other day. This is the first one, “Affording grounds for legal action.” Ha. so when I see that term that is what I think. Will a blogger get sued over the advice they are giving.
What matters, and what you do, is provoke thoughts. Which is an action and a meaningful one for people who are deep thinkers.
I think every type of writingt fits into the picture somewhere. Now, if we can get it in front of the people who like it the most then we will be golden.
@susansilver Well thanks, Susan. Actionable is getting yourself sued, huh? Well, that could explain a lot about the online world 🙂
I’m glad my posts make you think. I try to offer observations on things that other people aren’t really talking about – stuff from my own crazy brain and my own crazy point of view. If it can inspire other folks to think about some of the same things, then I reckon that’s pretty okay 🙂
I enjoy your historical perspective – that is definitely a value add you provide that doesn’t show up in my other blog reading. Of course, I have a lot of fun with our interactions as we debate topics (whether in blog comments or Facebook/Twitter).
I also like when you tie several concepts into a series – especially if I am curating that content over several days on different accounts. Series are always great for getting them “coming back for more”. I also enjoy the book reviews.
@dbvickery Well golly, Brian. Tanku!!!
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