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I received a note from an old friend this morning. He caught me up on the changes in his life (wouldn’t it be nice if someone you knew over 50 had some stability?) and said he was prompted to reach out by this blog. Apparently he’s been reading me for a bit and felt as if he should acknowledge that. Of course he didn’t really need to but it goes without saying I’m glad he did. It also got me thinking about some of the reasons I do this. No, I’m not going to repeat this post on my reasons for blogging. But I do want to point out a couple of things that may help you to think through why you might want to give this a try or, if you’re currently writing a blog, areas of focus for your business blog.
That’s actually the first point: this is my business blog. While obviously some of the things about which I write are personal, my focus here is all business. Yes, music, food, golf, and even politics show up but I usually try to tie them to some business point. Frankly, I’ve not written about a bunch of interesting things because I can’t think of a way to relate them in a meaningful way to some best practice I would advise you to follow.
This is a marketing tool. Hopefully it doesn’t feel that way, but I’ll refer prospective clients here to see a bit about how I think. Hopefully it helps them credit me with a certain amount of authority but most importantly it gives them comfort that hiring me is less of a risk than some other stranger.
This is also a listening tool. You guys are generous with comments, both private via email and public on the blog. It helps me stay on track with respect both to my thinking and the topics I cover.
Last point: this is often fun but it’s rarely simple. Coming up with five topics a week is probably the hardest part (feel free to suggest some!) but making each of them useful to you guys isn’t always easy. I don’t want to be like the twits on Twitter who send out 3 posts an hour that are just noise and clutter. After all, what sort of confidence would that give clients, prospective clients, or you that I’m worth a few minutes out of your day?
Does that make sense?
Consult Keith 