Are You Breaking Bread on Your Blog?
by Guest Blogger, Lena West, Chief of Social Media Strategy at xynoMedia
I’m very interested in etymology. It could be because I’m naturally inquisitive. (Who am I kidding? I’ve copped to being absolutely and totally nosy long ago.)
I was reading a magazine recently and I learned that the word “company” is derived from two words:
com – with
panis – bread
Hmm. You know? As in, “to break bread with”. Interesting and makes perfect sense to me.
Then I started to think about how we tell our clients they should, “clean up before inviting company”. Meaning…if your website needs work, get that work done before you start marketing and driving traffic to a website that won’t and can’t leverage the faces (it’s not eyeballs anymore, it’s faces – hey, I try to stay hip – I said TRY).
Makes even more sense now, eh? No? Ok. Let’s try this…
We also know that in days of ye old lore (that means nothing in this context, I’ve just always wanted to say that), people didn’t “break bread” with people they disliked. And, in fact, many people, like me, don’t break bread with people they dislike – even today. I can tell you from experience, it makes for poor digestion.
The same thing goes for your blog. Are you inviting the types of people to visit your blog with whom you’d PREFER to break bread — or are you settling for any old company?
If you’re serious about it, your social media activities are a place of investment. You invest your time, your money and your energy — and ditto goes if you have a team of people working with you. It’s like your home. You keep your home tidy, looking nice, smelling nice and you keep the mortgage and taxes paid. Why? Because it’s your investment. I’m sure you wouldn’t allow someone to trapse through your living room, put their cigarette out on the arm of your sofa, spill food on your rug and then invite them to stay for dinner. On the contrary, you’d be happy to see them go immediately if not sooner.
So, then why settle for just any old company (read: traffic) on your blog? Why not put the effort into attracting the kind of people you’d like to invite in for a cool brewski or a cuppa? Sure, it takes work – keeping out the “undesireables” (clutch the pearls), and maybe you might not have as many visitors to serve tea to…but the company you WOULD have would be priceless and worthy of your fresh baked bread new blog posts.
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