Seeing Something in Print Sometimes Makes it More Real

A couple of days ago I was endeavouring to explain

to a colleague the business significance of blogging and why that

excites me, but to little evident avail. I had talked about this

previously, with her directly and to others when she was present.

On this occasion, I happened to have with me the hardcopy verson of Business

Week of a couple of weeks ago, with the cover story ‘Blogs will change your

business’. My colleague was first of all impressed by the cover, then riffled through the

articles, then said, now I think I understand what you’ve been talking about.

As my colleague admitted, it’s a funny

thing about having

something in print. We are conditioned to believe it more readily than

something we hear, or - for most of us I suspect - something we read

online.

This has some interesting implications for

marketing. I’ve heard some direct sales marketing people say that if

you restrict yourself to online marketing and don’t use offline

methods, including print advertisements and ’snail mail’, you are

needlessly limiting your impact in the market.

And by the way, on a contrary note to the very upbeat Business Week article, or at least an

agnostic note, it was interesting to read the blog ‘Business Week’s cover: the

kiss of death’ at Blogads

If you are looking for the original Business Week article:

‘Blogs will change your business’, it doesn’t seem to have a  blog type permalink. What I had to

do to find it online again was first to subscribe (free) to Business Week Online and search

on <blogs will change your business>.