In a recent post title Only Generous Bloggers Influence, Steve Rubel makes some excellent points on online influence and persuasion. Most were right on, but one has the potential of becoming a dangerous business blogging “rule.”

First, where Steve got online persuasion and influence right. Steve defines a generous blogger as someone who:

“…pumps out lots of great content that’s worth reading, are giving when it comes to links and their time, … shares deep and profound thoughts that they probably could keep proprietary.”

These are all spot-on points. And to expand beyond the more practical online influence and persuasion characteristics Steve lays out, there is a personal interaction and rapport building component that’s even more important for business owners who are marketing with blogs and other New Media tools.

Creating strong bonds often requires influence to extend way beyond great content and a helping hand online
We’ve found that creating strong bonds often requires influence to extend way beyond great content and a helping hand online. This is especially true for those business people like us and our clients who, as Seth Godin would say are blogging to “turn strangers into friends, and friends into customers.”

For example, since our audience here at Advanced Business Blogging is primarily made up of business owners and professionals new to blogging and other New Media tools for marketing, we get contacted more by email and phone than we do online through comments, etc. It’s the same with our other business blogs. And many of our clients who are business owners outside a “techie” type niche/industry with audience members may be more familiar with blogging and social media, are finding the same thing to be true.

This type click-and-mortar contact requires an entirely new set of influence skills…

Most notably the ability to seamlessly cross over from effectively connecting online to instantly building rapport with the first contact off-line. Something that will be covered in depth in our upcoming book due for release this Fall (Morgan James Publishing/Ingram) Secrets of Online Persuasion… shameless plug. :)

For complete and effective online influence and persuasion, business people need to remember that the technologies of the New Media Marketplace (blogs, podcasts, social networking sites, etc.) are only a communication channels.

People are at both ends of that channel. That means that the same rapport building skills required to attract people and create powerful relationships face-to-face are needed. And since the New Media Marketplace is participatory and interactive, it’s going to become increasingly unavoidable to business people looking to market online that the mass media inspired Web Marketing 1.0 methods of interruption will no longer work.

Web Marketing 2.0 is not about technology. And it’s definitely not about interruption. This new and rapidly growing marketplace is about people, participation, and persuasion! That means a return to the proven principles of influence and rapport building that many business people have forgotten thanks to the mass media mindset that’s permeated our culture for the last 75-years.

Oh, stop me before I start down that road! Four hours of phone consultations with two political campaign teams yesterday has about drained me on that topic for this week. :-D

The dangerous statement

On where Steve stated something that could be very dangerous, he stated that generous bloggers:

“…publish full text feeds, a hallmark of benevolent bloggers.”

As well-meaning as Steve may have been when he made this statement, it’s dangerous because of his influence and reach online. The danger lies in the fact that some people may see this as one of those “rules” of the blogoshere created by “early adopter” bloggers. A rule to be checked off without thought on the part of many newcomers. A rule that makes a person who protects their content by choosing to publish summary feeds being automatically labeled “non-giving” and hence a non-influencer.

The only New Media Marketing “no-no’s” are actions/practices that break rapport
The only rules we feel there should be in the New Media Marketplace are actions/practices that break rapport. I’m sorry, but the vast majority of people in the world are not going to see clicking on a link to read the full article/story of something they’re interested in as a rapport breaker.

There are many valid reasons for publishing a summary RSS feed, not the least of which is preventing content scrapping. This is a process where spammers and other unscrupulous “black hat” online marketers “scrape” (steal) content that they then use on anything from thousands of fake blogs running ads (splogs), to porn promotion sites.

For example, just yesterday Rose DesRochers (a published author and poet who runs Todays-Women.net) wrote me on how she had her content scraped by slime ball splogger who used her missing children focus to promote his teen porn sites.

We’ve had a number of issues similar to this happen to us and we’ve heard it from many of our clients actively marketing with blogs and New Media too. Our friend Jonathan Bailey over at Plagiarism Today frequently shares other such horror stories, along with great tips on combating this growing problem.

Steve Ruble’s own content has been used this way thanks to full text RSS feeds. And even the PR powerhouse Edelman, the company Steve works for has sploggers and scrapers coming in the back door (as of this writing) to infiltrate the companies blog on the very post that announces Steve’s hiring in February.

Content scraping, copyright infringement, sploggers, comment spam — these are all serious (though not insurmountable) issues for those who are blogging for business and marketing purposes. If publishing a summary feed helps combat that, even temporarily — then why should that be demonized?

Focus on people, participation, an persuasion!

Keep your eye on the good news.

Even with the issues of copyright infringement from content scrapers and sploggers trying to piggyback off successful business bloggers page rank and traffic — the New Media marketplace is infinitely more easy to navigate than the mass media influenced Web Marketing 1.0 environment.

No longer is marketing success about cheating the next algorithm change at Google, or feverishly trading inbound links to boost page rank, or any other such time-consuming BS to achieve top search engine rankings.

Successful online marketing in today’s rapidly changing marketplace has remarkably stable roots. It’s about building relationships with people. it about influence and persuasion that starts online, and then turns into real-world person-to-person connections and business!

Reference links for this article:

Copyright © RPM Success Group Inc. 2002-2006. All full copyright rights are reserved by RPM Success Group inc. Other bloggers and journalists are allowed to excerpt and link to posts (as is common with bloggers,) as full credit/attribution is given to AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com and RPM Success Group Inc.

Discover the only strategic online sales and persuasion system guaranteed to unleash the maximum marketing power of the New Media in your business — BLOG Interactive 360™.

John-Paul is a published author and weekly columnist for the Honolulu Star Bulletin. As a Business Coach and New Media Marketing Consultant he helps small business owners market, manage, and sell more with self-influence and persuasion. You can reach J.P. directly via [communicationcommando@gmail.com].

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