I coach, consult and educate small business owners on how to use their websites to grow their businesses. Some of my clients are not bloggers. Some are. Many become bloggers during the process.

So I’m always looking for easy-to-understand ways to explain to my clients about why they want to be blogging. Moreover, I always want to engage my clients in conversation that will make them think about whether they’re using the web most effectively or not.

Reading some of David Armano’s ‘Greatest Hits’ on Logic+Emotion this morning I ran across a post called, The 4C’s of Blogging. In less than 90 words, David does a great job stirring thought around why, if I’m a small business owner, I would want to consider blogging.
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Last week Daniel over at Daily Blog Tips announced ran his first, of what he’s calling his Monthly Blog Projects. He set two parameters for each month’s project:

1. Send me your tip about the current topic (the first one will be “Traffic Generation Tips”). You can use the contact form or post a comment below.
2. After I publish the list of participants and their tips you write a post with a link to everyone that participated in the project.

I thought this sounded great. All of us that read in Daily Blog Tips would benefit from all the responses Daniel get to each month’s project. AND, if we participate in the montly project, we benefit with links and trackbacks to our sites. Sounds like a win all the way around, huh?

Well Daniel just posted Blog Project: 30 Traffic Generating Tips with some nice tips from bloggers about how to grow the traffic on our blogs. Many of the tips we’ve heard before…commenting on other blogs, join communities, post frequency, etc.
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Hi. You’re reading my blog and thank you.

Just so you know, I consider you part of my audience. Ideally, I’d like my blog to add enough value to your life and business that you choose become a regular reader. And it would be great if you get my feed and check me out on a regular basis; leaving comments as you go.

That’s the way I think. But according to Stowe Boyd I shouldn’t be calling you part of my ‘audience‘ any longer. In his post, Enough Already: Getting Social Media All Wrong, Stowe writes:

…Please, please, please don’t talk about audiences when you are theoretically promoting social media. As Jay Rosen has suggested, we are the people formerly known as the audience. Blogging is not just another channel for corporate marketing types to push their messages to markets, eyeballs, or audiences. Social media is based on the dynamic of a many-to-many dialogue between people. Yes, people: that’s the word that should have been used. Not audience. If you’d like to make a distinction between a company and those outside the company, just remember: they are not an audience for your messages, any more than you are an audience for theirs. The whole point is that the people formerly known at the audience — the edglings, as I call us — are participating in the blogosphere, and if individuals within companies want to, they can participate: as individuals. Companies don’t blog, or converse: people do.

Now I agree with his points about pushing a message in front of eyeballs and that dialogue and blogging happens between people, not companies. I’m all for that.
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