I was at Wordcamp this weekend and a talk by Darragh Doyle got me thinking about social media and blogging for beginners. It’s very easy when you are immersed in the online world of social media to come out with statements like “just throw up a Wordpress blog” or “open a twitter account and start talking to people”. They feel very easy steps for business owners to be able to make in trying to establish an online presence. I’ll tell you now that they are not. All my work is online, I tap away at a computer for 16 hours a day and live and breath this sort of stuff just like many other people do on Twitter and other social networks, it comes as second nature to many of us but I remember blogging for the first time and sending my first tweet and it is bloody hard at first, daunting even. What I saw as I listened to Darragh’s talk was a room of people who were eager to learn and I could feel the delight as Darragh talked them through it. You could feel the tension ease as people were able to ask simple questions like “who will read my blog” and “how will people find me online” and get the simple answers they were looking for. Child’s play to seasoned internet people but a whole new world to many.

Using Social Media Is Like Driving A Car

Most of us know how to drive. We take it as second nature when we jump in behind the wheel. You hardly need to think about what you are doing and your mind is usually elsewhere as you cruise around on autopilot. It wasn’t that way at the very start though, we all had to learn. You probably had a few lessons or had a friend show you the ropes. Simple skills like changing the gears and parking felt totally alien to us all at the start and we needed to repeat them over and over until we knew how. Social media and using online tools like blogging for your business are no different…

Getting It Wrong

Here is the classic example of how people start. It is one of the biggest supermarkets in Ireland who have clearly heard that twitter is the place to be to increase sales and they have come along, followed 100 people from a list they have found and sent one tweet which is a special offer thinking it will increase their sales. Are they wrong? Yes absolutely. Should they be vilified and slagged off? No not at all, it’s new to whoever is running the account and they’ll figure it out in the long run but at the moment they have just jumped in the car without any training and are getting it wrong. Nobody jumps in to the car for the first time and speeds off around the corner like Jenson Button, most people will stall on their first uphill start. It takes time.

Would You Slag Off A Driving Instructor?

I always hear people giving out about the simplicity of talks like the one Darragh gave at Wordcamp or about blog posts that we write here like 50 resources to improve your blogging or about people “teaching twitter” but the reality is that these sorts of posts and talks are aimed at a totally different audience, the beginners. I saw the look of relief on some people’s faces when Darragh explained what a blog actually was and how people could find your business through your blog, yes it’s obvious to me and you but to some of the trout farmers and hostel owners in the room it wasn’t. As the girls from Beaut.ie (Ireland’s biggest fashion blog) explained earlier in the day their readers don’t have a clue that they are even on a blog, to their readers it is just a website.
I just think we should all take a little time and help people who are starting off like Darragh was in his talk. Sometimes we have a tendency to all sit around and snigger at beginners which would be like Fernando Alonso, Schummacher and Jenson Button sitting in the pit lane in Monaco sniggering at driving instructors. I know some people might take the piss when it comes to teaching services like Twitter but there are also a whole bunch of people out there who don’t know how to tweet, blog, update, share or post videos on Youtube so if you spot somebody like that maybe give them a hand out and nudge them in the right direction instead of slagging them off about their inability to grasp something that you find so simple.

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