Whadda Ya Mean Looks Aren’t Important?

A few days ago I posted a piece about some professionals not taking their blog marketing effort seriously. These comments came in via email. I’m not sure why they just didn’t post a comment with the article. Perhaps these emails were from those I’ve said were deficient blog marketers. If so, and that’s highly probable, they likely don’t know how to leave a comment. Thus, the email. But that’s a topic for another post.

These emails said that in blogging it was content that was important and that appearance was not important. Huh?

Alright. I’ll agree with the first point. Content is very important. For gosh sakes, content is king, after all. No argument from me on that one. The company I work for even has the word “content” in its name. But appearance is not important? Come on.

If that was true, doctors would be wearing overalls to the office. Lawyers would show up to court in pajamas. Lawyers in pajamas. Thanks for the visual. Accountants would paint their offices in primary colors. Cartoonists would design the stationary for financial planners. I could go on, but you get the idea.

My mother used to tell me that people judge you by your appearance. I thought she was full of baloney. But after going to my first few job interviews wearing a white tie and a brown shirt (Give me a break, it was the 70s. And the judgment that just popped into your mind, proves my point.) and not getting any offers, I figured out she was right.

It might be unfortunate. It might be biased. But people do judge others by appearances. If they didn’t there wouldn’t be a cosmetics industry.

So if people see a doctor’s or lawyer’s or accountant’s or financial planner’s blog, that looks like it was put together by a kindergartener, that’s exactly what they’ll think. And the people will extend those thoughts of sloppiness to the services being offered by the professional. It’s a fact of human nature.

And it won’t help a professional practice.