Blogs have come a long way since the late nineties, but most people still don’t really know much about them. The terminology confuses them. They have absolutely no desire to leave comments, and don’t know why anyone would. All the widgets in the blog sidebar are incomprehensible.
There are millions of people online who barely know what they’re doing on the internet. Can you blog for them? Oh, YEAH. You absolutely can! How? Well, I’ll get to that in a minute, but to set the stage, let’s put ourselves in the mind of a person who isn’t tech-savvy. We’ll call him Jeff.
Portrait of a Low-Tech Surfer
Jeff knows how to use the back button of Internet Explorer (not Firefox) and uses Outlook Express for his ISP-given email address. He doesn’t know how to set the home page of his browser. He doesn’t know how to use Favorites (he’s managed to add a couple, but he doesn’t know how to open them). When Jeff wants to go to a website, he does it by “search navigation.” In other words, he types in whatever.com in the search box at MSN (or Google, but only after doing the same thing at MSN to get to Google). Then he clicks on the most promising search result. That’s how he navigates the internet.
Jeff’s (and many others’) searches might land them on your blog. If you know what you’re doing, you can deliberately target Jeff and others like him. Being less net and tech savvy, Jeff is more likely to click on ads or affiliate links. Jeff is less likely to be skeptical of the source of the information he’s reading. Jeff is less likely to suspect he might be reading a paid review. Jeff is NOT stupid. He’s just at an earlier stage of learning the ways of of the web. We are all at some point along this path, and some of us are farther along than others. All that blog bling and weird blog terms like trackback and permalink are going to make Jeff uncomfortable, and that makes him less likely to convert (do what you want him to on your site).
Traits of a Blog for a Low-Tech Audience
If you want to create a blog for a low-tech audience, try the these tips:
- Use a blog theme or template with a left sidebar and left or horizontal navigation
- Use Feedburner to host your RSS feeds, because it has email subscription capability, and then create a prominent email subscription area on your blog
- Don’t create a prominent RSS subscription block with a big RSS icon or a feed count–you will scare off your low-tech audience
- Get rid of comment links, use a contact page instead–low-tech people are far more comfortable with email
- Don’t use the word “permalink” anywhere–they don’t know what it means
- Don’t put any JavaScript widgets in your sidebar unless it’s some kind of regular news link list that anybody could understand
- Don’t use blog or tech jargon in your posts
- Design the blog’s hyperlinks so that they are blue and underlined
- Use a theme or design that’s compatible with Internet Explorer 6
Blogs are Tools
Remember, a blog is just a method for creating web content. Yes, it usually has certain characteristics in common with other blogs, but it’s far more important to create web content that is a good match for its intended target audience. If you want to create online content for less tech-savvy audience, a blog is a great tool. You just need to make it look a little more like a more traditional website.
Photo by altemark under CC license
18 Comments
I live in a rural, low-economy area in Canada. Most people have computers at home, but it’s a relatively new trend. Most people don’t know how to use the Internet and call me to look up postal codes for them. They have no ability to understand or conceive of what a web content writer is, let alone a blog.
I’ve resorted to “You know when you go to Google, type in peanut butter, and a site comes up?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, maybe I wrote that.”
“Ooooh…” But then I get a screwed up, confused face from them and they say, “That’s your job?” They just don’t get it.
More often than not, I’m told I’m crazy, that the people who go online are crazy - and if they’re not, they’re pedophiles, looking to date people from other countries and leave their spouses or trying to do homework. I would say that easily over 75% of adults above age 30 where I live fit Jeff’s profile and then some.
Good post. Thank you for reminding me that the people around me are not the only ones behind in the times, as it were. Sometimes I think the rest of the world is zooming along and the people in my town only are living in the dark ages.
For niche blogs that would most likely draw “low tech” visitors, these are some good tips. However, I feel designing for “low tech” visitors would hurt the overall look and feel of the site for those visitors that appreciate and use technology. How would you suggest balancing out how we should design blogs for advanced and beginners in technology and blogging?
I’m really conflicted on how far we should dumb down blogs, etc. For the record I love reading blogs, writing my own blog and keeping up with news about blogs but I hate the term “blog”. It sounds like something I stepped on in the parking lot. However the goal of my blog is not to appeal to the technical newbie but rather small business people and/or entrepreneurs and the Internet , business blogs and RSS are getting to be tools of business one must know about for a variety of reasons.
Normally the article I write to contain some blog or tech jargon but at the same time I spend a good amount of time explaining those terms to educate my audience.
Overall I agree with most of your suggestions however I’m so passionate about RSS and how it can be used by business to the point I write about it and give talks that I leave it on my site.
By the way I like how you have the check box for e-mail subscription at the bottom of the comment box. That’s a feature I use sometimes on other sites and I should go ahead and include it on my site this morning.
@Erica: Good points. An advanced user doesn’t need to see a big RSS icon, she knows her reader will auto-discover the feed URL. Same with permalinks: she knows that the post title or date/time stamp is the permalink. Also, if you’re specifically targeting a low-tech audience with your content, than it’s likely to have less appeal to a more tech-savvy person, and vice versa.
@Patrick: This all comes down to one of the most important things we need to clearly understand about our blogs: who we’re writing for. If small business entrepreneurs may your intended audience, you’re looking at a group that is above complete newbie status, but that needs to be educated. The ones who are eager to learn and who are starting to see that there are advantages to blogging are your best audience.
Good points Michael.
One of the trends of IM these days is that more and more “newbies” are now online. Michael Fortin wrote a nice piece on that recently.
BTW, when you say, “and uses Outlook Express for his ISP-given email address.”
I am guilty of this. What is a more efficient alternative. Gmail?
Mark
First off, linkerjpatrick has now gone down in history as the best “blog” analogy. It really is an ugly, ugly word. Beautiful thing, horrible name. You heard it here first, people.
Second, I’m going to print this off, roll it up, and beat my clients over the head with it. I’d like to add one thing, though. Jeff does not want to be anything other than Jeff. Jeff is totally happy and sees absolutely no reason to change. We all have our Jeff aspects. Every penny that comes into my house comes via the internet and I just went over to Firefox a month ago.
Jeff is not inferior. There is nothing wrong with him.
@Mark: It’s not a crime to use Outlook Express with your ISP-given email address. But one difference between a beginner and someone with more internet/computer experience is that the more experienced person often looks for ways to improve upon the “defaults.” In fact, this can become a dangerous obsession!
I love Gmail, but I need an internet-based service because I travel a lot and use different computers at multiple locations. I can’t be chained down to one piece of client-side software on one computer. Some people prefer a client application that hooks into their internet email (like Gmail) and you can use Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird (my wife loves it).
If you’re in business, there’s a lot to be said for having an email addy at the same dot com as your site URL. Again, you can use Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird for this, or connect to it with Gmail (Gmail is the only free internet email service I know of that lets you forward and alias and combine email accounts without charging).
@Naomi: Blog I can live with. Moblog and vlog deserve horrible, painful deaths. Preferably something involving lots of sharp paper and lemon juice.
You are absolutely right about Jeff not wanting to be anything other than himself. That goes right along with what I said about Jeff not being stupid. I don’t think of this as “dumbing down” anything at all. I think of it as meeting the needs of the most important people in the world: your readers, and, if your blog is a business, your clients. Thank you for the additional insight.
Thanks for the response Michael.
I depend on accessing my email from my workplace (a remote site) or when I’m away and I find that the interface provided by my ISP (Rogers, who is partnered with Yahoo, I’m Canadian, eh?) works well for this.
I like to try to keep it simple, like Jeff.
I’m glad I subscribed to your blog. Reviewing your PDF is still on my “to-do” list.
@James: One of favorite writers is science fiction master William Gibson, and one of my favorite quotes comes from him:
The beauty part about this is that you can make crazy money from the internet while surrounded by people who have no idea what’s going on with the interwebs.
When people ask me what I do, depending what I’ve picked up from them, I will say I’m either a blog consultant or that I make websites for people. And sometimes I’ll say, “You know… computer stuff. If told you about it, I’d bore you to death.”
My favorite is when somebody just learned there is this whole new world of online opportunity and they are excited and eager to learn more. Then, you couldn’t shut me up even with a shotgun.
I am trying to get people to comment on my blog and since my readership is full of Jeff’s it is a constant struggle. I have one reader who emails or phones to comment on what I have written and often has really valuable stuff to say. When I suggested she comment on the blog, she said she wouldn’t know what to write. Go figure!
I’m also encouraging my readers to start their own blogs as they are all vacation home owners who rent out their properties. Trying to convince them they really could go it alone and market their property with a blog rather than spending massive amounts on a web design and development, is a tough one.
Michael, your last comment really resonated with me. Isn’t that the case when someone really shows enthusiasm and interest - it’s so exciting. Like taking a kid to Disneyworld for the first time.
@ Michael - Too funny. Same here. Someone who is keen to know the opportunities better have three hours to kill.
seriously, what is a permalink anyway? i will have to look that one up!
i dont know why, but its hard to believe so many are behind the times for the simplest things. ironic for me because i am learning new terms every day and i feel overwhelmed. its an excellent way for me me to procrastinate, i will start my sites as soon as i learn about this or that…lol.
@SC: If you subscribe to my blog and download the ebook next time I write a post (that’s when you get the link), it has a glossary of blog terms in it. A permalink is the permanent link to a blog post that always works, even when that post goes off the home page.
@Heather: If you want people to blog about their vacation home properties, consider starting your own blog network or even just a massive multi-author blog about it. Do it as a paid membership thing and provide members with instructional and tutorial materials on how to best present their properties on the blog. Show them how to do YouTube videos and everything.
Heather, I have the same issue as you. My very small niche is aimed at non-technical people, so most of them don’t comment.
Not that it’s really helped in my case, but there are a couple of guestbook generators for WordPress that may appeal more to people like “Jeff.” Some would be more likely to leave a message there.
Michael - Just wanted to let you know that I think you’ve coined a new term: Jeff.
I’ve been using “Jeff” in my conversation without knowing it for a damned week now. Everyone blinks and says, “Who’s Jeff?”
Doh.
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