Matthieu Buisson of Frenchmat-Galaxy asks, “The best blogs about blogging are from USA and Australia but are all these blogging tips really effective in other cultures like France, Spain, China, etc… and how?”
I’ve never really thought about blogs about blogging being categorized by country. As a communications medium, blogs are successful because they allow people to connect with one another and share ideas, thoughts and news. Tips about blogging essentially boil down to a couple of things–one, how to generate ideas for meaningful content that people will want to read and, two, how to get your message across to the greatest number of people.
I think tips about ideas for meaningful content can transcend language and cultural barriers. The very best ones are also applicable across many niches. Idea generation is not something that is a unique problem for just English-language or Australian or North American blogs–I think it is fair to say bloggers everywhere can use tips on idea generation.
On the other hand, tips on how to get your message across to the greatest number of people can be limited by cultural differences. Here, expression is very much influenced by cultural peculiarities. For example, in some cultures, it may be very impolite and insensitive to openly criticize at best, and something that might get you jailed or even killed at worst. Yet, criticism is a very accepted way to create controversy and initiate discussion in North American blogs.
Other techniques may not be available or well understood in other countries (for example, the technique of linkbaiting may be very nascent in countries where bloggers don’t normally link to others). Like anything else, one has to utilize the advice that best fits the circumstances and discard the rest.
[If you have a question you like answered, email me at ihelpyoublog /at/ gmail /dot/ com.]
{ 1 comment }
Thank you very much for answering my question.
Communication is also about the best ways to convince and this depends a lot upon culture.
We observe this in advertising: it is more “hard-selling” and text-based in North America than in Asia or some latine cultures, maybe it is the case for blogging ?
I think Asian culture tend to use more pictures and symbols to convey an idea.
Culture influence the way people use the internet, for example French bloggers are less RSS-savvy than most of english-speaking countries. Maybe there are a lot of differences like this across countries, but this subject is not often dealt with… so thanks again
Comments on this entry are closed.