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To Blog or Not to Blog
belongs to Enterprise 2.0 Group  by Erik Britt-Webb on 2007-09-14 10:41 PM read 767 times |
I've been talking with a number of people about the good, the bad and the ugly of blogging. How does it work? Why do it? Should I represent myself, or some organization when I blog? How risky is it? What are the potential pitfalls and side-affects?
Hopefully this discussion thread can help a few of us to hash out these and other questions, in the context of our relationship to BSG.
1 Reply
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The good -
- You have an opinion and you are willing to post it to the world
- You express you are willing and able to hold an open and transparent conversation
- You build new relationships because of the coversations you engage in
The bad -
- You need to be a consistent blogger to develop a rapport with your audience - if you get one! That takes time & who has that?
- Your opinion is out there and can't come back! If you blog, Google posts it to the world in minutes. Be ready to defend your thoughts!
Steve G and I were talking about this just yesterday. I'm sure you all know my bias on blogging-- NIKE! (hint). More importantly, if we are to truly represent ourselves in the market as the go-to guys when our customers are ready to make their NGE transformation-- we need to be living the dream ourselves. IMHO all of our leadership team should be blogging regularly. Tom has done an amazing job picking up the blogging bug; Katie Tierney is an awesome blogger with a distinctive voice. Once you get started, it becomes addicting-- trust me, you find time for it because you can't help yourself.
But remember, blogging is never to be confused with simply pressing SEND on your opinions to the world. As I explained to Steve G-- you are but a mere spec of dust in a complex web of discussion to which you are CONTRIBUTING. The blogosphere is a conversation and blogging is a dialog not a monologue. This is where it really gets interesting and worlds collide and social nirvana is reached by greater understanding through intellectual honesty and collaboration.
Transparency in blogging is what we risk as consultants. In other words, you are what you blog. There is no eraser on the Internet*. It's like I said in my 10 blogging tips: #1. To Thine Own Self be True. John the Consultant is John the Soccer coach is John the Husband of Anna is John the MIT Alum. Be yourself. All will be reading your blog; be yourself. The best long-term client relationships are based on the same principles of good blogging: trust, credibility, authority, results, and a strong extended social network.
Think about this rationally for a moment. None of us would be "here" at this point in our professional lives if we weren't expert, smart, competent, and clever. If we are wrong, stupid, annoying, etc., on our blogs on occasion-- it only stands to humanize us. The benefits of contributing far outweigh the deficits of staying out of the conversation.
I'll stop now. ;-) Get your blog on now, you NGE crusaders...!
*Not original, saw this recently (somewhere in the blogosphere?)
In no particular order:
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I've seen many different blog services and tools, and I'm sure there hundreds more I'm not even aware of. But, the simplest advice I seem to keep encountering is to use Wordpress.com. In just a few minutes, you can create your own login account and setup a blog. In fact, you can set up many blogs using the same login. It has a decent user dashboard to show you all postings and comments across your blogs.
For $10/year, you can also tell wordpress to change the URL for your blog. Instead of www.wordpress.com/myself, in your blog can appear to be located at www.blog.myself.com (or whatever URL you want).
The other aspect of this that I'd like to address is a desktop software interface. While Wordpress provides a good web interface, I understand that there can be advantages to using a desktop software program which will synchronize your blog entries between the web and your desktop. I haven't researched this in-depth, but my limited research has led me to Ecto (http://infinite-sushi.com/software/ecto). It seems to be pretty solid a full featured.
Look forward to hearing other's opinions.