The Anti Geek of the Blogosphere

Turning a Business Weakness into a Strength

uselessblogger — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:29:07 +0000

Note this blog was a practice blog. My real blog Forever Changewas launched in July 2008.

Today’s post is about how revealing a weakness in your business can actually be a strength. This is the third and final post in the series Why WordPress(.com) themes suck.

Do you conceal your business weaknesses?
Even if your business is doing well there is bound to be at least one (and maybe numerous) areas of weakness. Businesses are often quite good at promoting their best features for obvious reasons. It makes sense to highlight your strengths and impress your potential customers. Therefore you could argue that a business should conceal or suppress any weaknesses. Generally this is what most businesses do and again it just makes sense to do this.

The idea for this post came from the frustrating experience I had in trying to format my last post – “Why WordPress themes suck – Getting back to basics” (sorry being an anti geek I don’t know how to put in a link). If you have look at that post you will notice large gaps between paragraphs and headings are not where they should be and so on. How hard can it be to get this right? Well for an anti geek it is quite difficult. I naively thought that I could prepare my post offline during my lunch period at work using microsoft word, email it to myself at home and then conveniently cut and paste into WordPress. To my dismay, what I thought was a good plan went pear shaped and turned into one of those nasty surprises that I alluded to in my last post.

What if the weakness is fundamental?
I wasted a lot of time trying to get the formatting to work (bearing in mind using anything like html etc is totally beyond an anti geek like me). In the end I decided to leave the post as it was and publish it anyhow. For something as fundamental as this I would have expected something in the WordPress.com site to warn new users. After searching for ages I finally found some mention of it in a forum where some other poor person described much the same problem as I had.

Being unable to copy from word into WordPress is a significant weakness that WordPress has chosen to conceal. Does it mean they should fix it? Even an anti geek like me understands that it would not be cost effective to fix this problem. (perhaps in the long term a fix might be plausible) What I am suggesting is where a business has a fundamental weakness that is bound to be “discovered” by their customers or potential customers then don’t hide it.

Turning a weakness into a strength
Using the example of my experience I outlined above – how could WordPress turn a weakness into a strength? Very easily and it only takes just two steps. Firstly WordPress can alert their customers up front of the problem with copying and posting from other programs eg word. The second step is to provide some alternatives that meet the fundamental needs. In this case one of the fundamental needs is the ability to prepare a post offline and be able to insert the post via whatever means into WordPress with correct formatting. WordPress can supply the solution to this dilemma by providing links to various free offline blogging services. End result? One happy customer.

Turning an industry wide weakness into a strength
Sometimes your business weakness may not be applicable to just your business. It could a perceived weakness within your industry. Why not be up front about this to your customers and then tell them what you have done to alieviate this problem. Customers are more likely to perceive you as honest and helpful and someone they can trust. Taking the approach of turning a weakness into a strength can help you to stand out from the crowd for all the right reasons. Isn’t that what you want?

Why WordPress themes suck Part 2) – Getting back to basics

uselessblogger — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:20:54 +0000

This post is the second in the series of Why WordPress themes suck (or more specifically why the WordPress.com themes suck). This little anti geek has since discovered that the free blog, themes and other blog features that are provided on WordPress.com are quite different to what is available on WordPress.org.

The fact that I found this information elsewhere and not on the WordPress.com site itself is a worry (how could she not know? I can hear you saying). Is this just another example of my super anti geekness or is this a marketing weakness on the part of WordPress?

Keeping the geeks and the anti geeks happy.

If you are in business in the IT field in any way, shape or form then please remember your customers range from the super geek through to people like me - the anti geek. Businesses should look to cater for the anti geek while at the same time have something to offer that will impress the super geek. How do you do this? By getting back to basics can win you customers from both ends of the spectrum.

Explain the basics to your customers first

Bear in mind I am writing from a consumer point of view and with my anti geek hat on. However even if I was a geek, I would have thought one of the fundamentals would be to make it clear up front what features your product or service has and also make it clear what it doesn’t have (nobody likes nasty surprises).

Although there was some information about some of the cool features of the themes, the WordPress.com site fails to make clear exactly what features are and aren’t included in their themes. Sure, someone who is more IT savvy will be able to work out what is and isn’t available, however doesn’t it make good marketing sense to tell people up front what their product/service does do and what it doesn’t do?

For an anti geek like me I found it confusing to work out what I could and couldn’t have in the themes, what I could and couldn’t change etc. At this point you could lose the customer as they may think it is too hard and will go elsewhere. In summary – make it easy for your customers to find out what you provide.

NOW highlight the “extras”

Once you have explained the basics then you can do the all singing, all dancing, rah rah rah stuff and start showing off all of the super cool impressive features that geeks will drool over and anti geeks will aspire to be clever enough to use.

Remember when internet surfing most people have a very short attention span. Don’t waste your potential customer’s time while they search for basic information. By covering the basics quickly and easily then WordPress can build on that to highlight in more detail what it is about the extra features that makes them stand out from the crowd.

Why anti geeks are important to your IT related business

So by getting back to basics and then doing your “but wait there’s more” routine you can satisfy the full spectrum of your customers and not put anyone off side. For those not convinced about the getting back to basics approach then chew on this:

Anti geeks are always going to struggle with various aspects of the IT world. They will be prepared to hand over their $$ more readily than a geek who figures they can do it themselves. Provide a good service for an anti geek once and they will be back for more. An anti geek is going to be reluctant to go elsewhere as they get confused or over whelmed by the options out there. Get back to basics and anti geeks will be attracted to your business. Look after them as a customer and I guarantee you they will be become a loyal customer. Trust me – I am speaking from experience.

Comments?

I have deviated a little from the overall theme of this series of posts but hopefully have given you something to think about. I am new to the blogosphere and would love to hear from you. Please make use of the comments area to say hello and provide feedback.

Why WordPress themes suck

uselessblogger — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:43:52 +0000

First of all let me be more specific. This post is the first in a series about why the free WordPress themes suck. The themes that you pay for, or any of upgrades you pay for may eliminate some or all of the problems I will be discussing in this series of posts.

I should be grateful getting something for free and I am. But WordPress is doing themselves a huge disservice by having some pretty basic flaws in their free service. It doesn’t create a very good first impression. Potential customers like me will form an opinion based on their initial experience.

So far I have not been impressed, in fact far from it. Read on and I will flesh out the reasons why the free themes suck from two perspectives:

an anti geek who struggles with IT
when getting something for free isn’t always a good marketing strategy

Size does matter

I am talking about font size here. The word press default font size is way too small. OK it may have been fine years ago. But come on – in 2008 they still have a super small font?

This is really poor marketing as the small font in my view is a branding image that has well and truly stuck. I have seen so many blogs that have good content but unfortunately have a free word press theme with really small font.

So over time the first thing I associate with WordPress is way too small font. This has become their “brand” which is not a good image to have as it smacks of being stuck in the internet dark ages. How hard is it for WordPress to increase the font size across all of their free themes?

When getting something for nothing can do more harm than good

Getting something for free is usually a good marketing ploy. I just wonder whether WordPress have got it wrong here (big time). If you get something for free but the quality is quite poor in comparison with recognised industry standards what message are they providing to potential customers?

Marketing dudes out there – have I got it wrong?

Let me know what you think about the issues raised in this post. If I am wrong then I am happy to be told so but please be constructive in your feedback.

If you thought this was a thought provoking article then please review it in StumbleUpon.

I am sure there is a widget out there to help do this but I have no idea whether it can be done on a free WordPress blog (and I would have no idea how to use it anyhow). This is part and parcel of being the anti geek of the blogosphere.

Have a nice day

10 Reasons why I am the Anti Geek of the Blogosphere

uselessblogger — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 09:18:24 +0000

Today I am going to share with you 10 reasons why I am the anti geek of the blogosphere.

1. I have no idea what a post slug is. I can see this button on my right as I post but I am too scared to click it. Can someone please explain?

2. I had to try 4 times before I was able to get through the Word Press sign on process. Kids probably know how to do thi s by the time they are six .

3. What is the difference between visual and code?

4. It took me 30 minutes to change the default image banner for my blog to my own image.

5. It has taken me 5 months to get the courage to try and get a blog started.

6. I am almost too scared to ask for help as I probably won’t undertstand the answer.

7. I have worked as a manager but a five year old knows more than I do about blogging.

8. I tried to register with MySpace a few days ago but mucked it up and then couldn’t change my logon. I have no idea whether I have a valid account or not.

9. I want to ask for help. (Geeks don’t do this cos they know everything and they tell people what they have done wrong, how they can improve etc)

10. I am still not sure what a blog is but this is mine!