I hear this a lot; it's not surprising. Our inboxes are jammed, we all have a million emails to handle, and the pace of business and life is only accelerating. Where does anyone find the time to blog? This is also the most common reason cited why people don't start blogging.
The reality is that whether you have a blog or not, you are already blogging; you're just not getting the benefit of it. Consider that every time you write a personal email message to promote your services or explain what you do, or describe some special features of a home, you are writing what amounts to a blog post. Everytime you answer a question through email, you are creating answers that could just as easily be documented in your blog.
There are many benefits to blogging your thoughts and huge disadvantages to communicating solely through email. When you use a blog, you...
- ... create a persistent and long-lasting knowledgebase. You and your staff and colleagues will use it for years to come.
- ... create a model of sharing that is referenceable - i.e., you don't have to answer the same questions over and over.
- ... create lots of search visibility based on what you know. This is your domain expertise and open documentation will lead to additional discovery of your personal and business brand.
Email is where knowledge goes to die. If you use email as the sole manner of business memory, recalling it can be particularly costly if you can recall it all. However, you can reverse the impact of corporate amnesia by following a few simple steps.
- Whenever you create an email - ask yourself, could this be useful as a public blog post?
- When you recieve an email question about your business or your services, document the answer as a blog post and reply with a link to the answer.
- Whenever you get a question in voice mail, consider answering through the Web as a blog post.
So, the next time you're at a party and someone asks why you aren't blogging, tell them you are; you're just not getting the benefits from it. ;-)
bf
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