When I go to a site, whether it’s a blog, a church site or any other kind of site, I want to know who’s behind the site. It’s one thing to read someone’s thoughts or opinions or view their marvelous products but lately I have noticed that I always want to know the people behind the site. Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about.
- When I started blogging, I was totally anonymous. I didn’t do it to be known, I did it because I wanted to milk as much information out of the blogosphere as possible. It was more like what’s in it for me. Over time, that has shifted to me being more transparent than I ever imagined. It took me a long time to get to this point and it took me nearly as long to actually put my pic up on this site.
- Lately, I have been building relationships with many people it seems, and a lot of that has been in the world of video production for churches. I am really enjoying getting more involved with this world, both in my church and out on the web. There are so many producers out there, it’s insane and I have made some good friends quickly.
- When I come across a church website, I generally find the staff page first, preferably with pics. I want to know who the people are in ministry at that church. After that, I’ll look at the various aspects of the church shared on the site.
So, what does this mean to you? I’m not sure, maybe we need to all work together to make this web2.0 social media world as accessible as possible, even beyond Facebook or other sites like that designed for this purpose. If you have a blog, put some effort into having a good About Me page. If you have a business, such as a video production site, consider putting a page on your site about the people behind the site and info about what the point is to your organization. I think we, as your site visitors would appreciate that.
Of course, I just now realize that with my new site design, my about me page is not there. Oops, guess I better get busy on that!
Do you agree?
Jim, I totally agree — anonymous/unknown is just not a good think if you’re a blogger, or even a commenter. I take considerable extra effort to figure out who bloggers are, and if I can’t get to the name, I typically unsubscribe. Maybe I’m being extreme.
Wow Jim, I do the same thing. I enjoy the info I gain but I want to know who the person is and what they look like. I also go to church websites and look at the staff pages, probably since I am a church staffer myself. I really like to see if I can match the blogger with their church. It seems funny to make friends this way but I have done that too.
Keep up the good work, and so glad you page is back up and running stable.
Well transparency and accessibility are two of the highest principles of this new budding social media world. Scoble and Brogan both have their real phone numbers right on their blogs. My thought is that this trends towards new standards of credibility which is probably the most important thing in attributing value to a website and it’s content.
I was preparing a sermon / testimony about transparency in today’s world comparing it and contrasting it with the small town atmosphere that forced a lot of transparency on our parents.
I’ve titled the sermon “Happy Plastic People” and it follows a testimony last week about the “The World is Flat” and it proceeds my building message about “His Kingdom IS flat”
I was googling for some content for “Happy Plastic People” when I found your blog entry and your site. Please keep it up in Southwest Missouri! Well Done!