(www.businessandblogging.com)

One of the reasons that both small and large businesses  cite for not wanting to start a blog is their concern over customer feedback. They worry that by opening up their blogs to comments, they will receive a preponderance of negative feedback from dissatisfied customers. They fear that the happy customers will remain silent. Their reputation will be damaged and they will lose potential new customers as well as existing neutral customers.

There are several flaws in that logic:

1)  If customers have constructive feedback for you – you need to hear it. As unpleasant as it may be, it is their perception of you.  You need to be aware of how you are being perceived, and correct any misperceptions before they become a publicity nightmare.  Forewarned truly is forearmed.

2) The act of providing a forum for feedback automatically reduces the frustration level of your customers.  A large part of the reason that your customers are so angry is that they feel they are not being heard. By enabling them to feel listened to, you immediately start to repair the relationship.

3) You have an opportunity to respond. A blog, by definition, is two-way communication. If a customer complains to you, you can respond with authenticity, empathy, compassion and information.  And for every customer that does complain, there are many more watching to see how you respond.  This is your real opportunity to build trust and develop loyalty.

4) Your customers are more discerning than you think.  Internet users and blog readers have become quite sophisticated over the past few years. They can distinguish between a legitimate complaint and someone who is merely ranting.  They will largely ignore the noise of the occasional crank. In fact, you may be surprised – they may even come to your defense, eliminating any need for you to defend yourself.

5) Customers are talking about you anyway.  This became evidenced in the past couple of weeks.  If Target or Steak n Shake had had their own blogs, their offended customers might have been able to take their concerns directly to the companies.  The issues could have been discussed, debated and resolved there, without spreading as far and wide over the blogosphere.  Both Target and Steak n Shake could have maintained more control and ensured that their sides of the story were being heard as well.  

So, instead of worrying about what your customers will say about you if you have a blog – worry about what they will think about you if you don’t have one.  Will you be perceived as a Champion who eats Feedback for breakfast and grows even Stronger? Or as a Loser who is Afraid of hearing the Truth?

What’s your opinion – should businesses let their customers respond publicly on a blog?

Go ahead and tell me what you think - Feedback – Yum!!!

Photo Credit: Guillermo Esteves

Post from: EveryJoe

Feedback: The Breakfast of Champions

What’s your blogging ROI?

And does it really matter?

Biz Blogging…WORKS. It is of…MONUMENTAL IMPORTANCE. (Or can be.)
- Tom Peters, Foreword to Naked Conversations

Last year, ProBlogger picked up a conversation thread off Debbie Weil’s BlogWriteforCEOs and proclaimed “Blogger achieves 5000% ROI from Blogging”(!!), sparking a conversation – and controversy – that continues today. Calculation details aside (the data cited actually translate into a 500,000% return) ProBlogger’s conclusion that a compelling ROI is the best argument for business blogging still applies. And is still contentious.

In The Corporate Blogging Book, Weil finesses the issue, arguing that although blogs exist in a digital realm often associated with metrics, the medium requires a different measure of value: ROB or return on blog. ROB is “all about connections, conversations, discovery, information, word-of-mouse, leverage, amplification and efficiencies.” Although she gives equal time to metrics, her point is simply that the true bottom line may not be search engine rankings, unique visitors and conversions but the fact that blogging solves a central problem: “the human desire – and business need – to connect.”

To blog or not to blog? In business today, that is the question.
- Daniel Pink, Review of The Corporate Blogging Book

Whether you think in terms of ROI or ROB, it’s a topic that is evergreen in its relevance to both organizations and individuals. One of the current methodologies being debated on conference podiums and in posts is Forrester’s Benefit/Value/Metric framework, highlighted in Charlene Li’s launch post and detailed in The ROI Of Blogging: The “Why” And “How” Of External Blog Accountability and “Calculating The ROI Of Blogging: A Case Study, A Look At The ROI of General Motor’s FastLane Blog” publications. The objective, in brief, is to factor in potential benefits, costs and risk factors in order to quantify the business impact of an external blog initiative.

A question, via comments, regarding the ROI of Li’s blog provides perspective on the grey area of the intellectual property and brand value in a medium that spans the individual and corporate arenas. Li’s response: “I’m not at liberty to discuss it in detail as Forrester is a public company and the information would be material.” From the individual perspective, this raises a few issues with regards to ownership and brand management.

With all of the congratulations and, again, controversy, surrounding “Top X” lists – i.e., Power 150, Top 20 PR PowerWomen and, most recently, the W List (now a wiki and on Facebook) – it struck me that this would be an opportune time to poll individual bloggers on the question of ROI – from both a corporate and personal perspective. Since I was profiling a Power 150 Marketing blogger for my Living the Brand column, I incorporated ROI and IP ownership questions into the interview. For example, “Has your blogging translated into increased market value or revenue for you personally or for an employer?”

The interview will appear in the November issue of Personal Branding magazine, but there’s no need to put the conversation on hold. If you’re a blogger (or are evaluating a personal or corporate blogging initiative) – weigh in with your perspective. What’s your blogging ROI?

So for me ROI is this: increasing Knowledge (for free), advancing Career, connecting with smart + talented people, staying on top of the industry

- David Armano, Logic+Emotion (via Rolling Talks)

Post from: EveryJoe

What’s Your Blogging ROI?

When widely read blogger Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine, AKA Internet Rockstar bought a Dell computer that bit the dust on him, he took to complaining about it on his website. He wrote several entries about “the lemon” he bought that basically exploded on him and the sucky customer service that came when he contacted the company about his dilemma. Jarvis’ posts quickly climbed their way up in Google’s rankings, one even topping Dell’s own website in the search results for “Dell”. A quick recap at Jarvis’ blog.

Soon Dell got a clue and began cleaning up their web woes by offering a full refund to Jarvis, communicating with the blogger, but more importantly by starting a blog of their own. It took a while for this PR move to soothe the beasts within the blogosphere, but they eventually came around. Even the harshest and most hardened bloggers can be swayed by a transparent move by a company who learns from its mistakes, all the while having good intentions. It’s hard to keep yelling in the face of that.

Here’s the thing, though: Dell could have prevented most, if not all, of this. Sure, they learned a hard lesson, and hard lessons are often the most effective kind, but who wants to be a constant example of what not to do in new media marketing and customer service? Had Dell had the foresight to invest in blogging by paying someone to write one for them full time–someone to act as a voice for the company, someone who would act as a listening conduit for the corporation and, maybe most importantly of all, someone who could scour the web looking for mentions of “Dell computer” or any permutations thereof–they could have prevented being an example in this and many other blog posts about what not to do.

Had Dell hired someone to immerse themselves in the blogosphere to be a voice of their brand that is authentic and honest, someone who is a regular reader and commenter of web dialog, they could have gotten ahead of the bad buzz. Dell’s blogger, had she been watching her Google alert feeds or Technorati results, would have had the ability to tackle the complaints head on instead of sitting back and watching the negative feedback blow up in their face. So to speak.

Companies, set up Google Alerts to be sent to your inbox or track them through your preferred feed reader. Google Alerts are, according to the search giant, “email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.” So, for instance, if a Dell blogger set up Google alerts for search results based on queries like “Dell laptops,” ” PowerVault NX1950,” “Vostro,” “OptiPlex” or even the misspelled “Del computer”, she’d know almost immediately of any self-published complaint or concern a customer had about her employer’s brand. It is important to get alerts for as many varied search queries as you can imagine. People talk about companies and their products in ways you wouldn’t expect, which is why I mention the misspelling. Be exhaustive, and you’ll not overlook a potentially damaging post.

Google Blog Search is another great way to see what other people are saying about you. Sometimes entering the name of your company into the Blog Search brings up results you might not get as quickly from your Alert. Google’s Blog Search can scan blog sites based on what was written just within the past hour, which gives companies unparalleled immediacy in identifying and addressing concerns from customers–concerns that can have unwanted (and maybe even unwarranted) ripple effects.

Companies should, in essence, stalk themselves. They should know what people online are saying about them, preferably before too many others do. That’s when bad buzz gets out of hand. But with a stalker’s mentality it’s easy to stay ahead of the game. In this case ego searching is essential.

Brittney Gilbert is a writer and professional blogger who has been self-publishing online since 1999. A seasoned corporate and personal blogger, Brittney was editor and author, until June this year, of the highly popular Nashville Is Talking and is now copy editor for Blog Magazine, which is dedicated to covering “the magazine industry at large, news of brand-new or dying periodicals, hot content and trends in coverage as well as covers”. She hates the word blogosphere, but uses it anyway.

Post from: EveryJoe

Beat Bad Buzz by Tracking Your Own Brand in the Blogosphere

Gordon Finlayson at the Download Squad reports today on recent experience with this blog post piracy and observes that

…while linking and references may be the lifeblood of blogging, there’s a submerged undercurrent of blogs and Web sites looking to get something for nothing, sailing the high seas of the Blogosphere with a view to plundering hard working Blogs for what they can in order to build up page views and Google page rankings.

Yes, blog piracy is still with us.

“Still”, because Om Malik wrote about it a year and a half ago, although not as “piracy” but as plagiarism. In Wholesale Blog Plagiarism…Alert! he gave specific examples, with links, observing that “these sites ONLY exist because they can make money from Google AdSense”.

The latest example in terms of one of my blogs came up when I noticed in the control panel for this blog a series of trackbacks, all from the one site, awaiting my approval.

When I clicked through to the site I found several posts from here reproduced in their entirety, down to the links to my feed being preserved!

Then I noticed other posts that looked familiar and realised that the site in question had posts, similarly reproduced entirely, from other b5media sites, including one with a very high profile in the blogosphere.

Of course, one of the many advantages of being part of a network like b5media is that I just have to notify the network and someone else follows through to neutralize any problems with this sort of activity.

But what does a business without access to a network administration or a legal department or adviser do in this sort of situation?

Because dealing with blog plagiarism, or as I like to refer to it, piracy, can be a rather tricky process.

For one thing, the plagiarists/pirates do not usually advertise their names or whereabouts. And if you try to find that out from their domain name details via whois, more than likely you will find that those details are private there too.

In Following Up on a Cease and Desist Jonathan Bailey, who is not a lawyer but has been writing online about these issues since 2005, provides a link to a stock cease and desist letter (evidently provided by him) on another site. He observes that in more recent times the effectiveness of the old “C&D” letter seems to have diminished and offers some advice on a more strategic approach to solving the problem.

He provides some background on the legal context, especially the significance of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DCMA) and links to another post of his on How to Write an Effective DMCA Notice

He suggests some other options besides the DMCA notice and warns that “the temptation to take things public should be avoided, no matter how strong it is.”

Maki at DoshDosh offers what looks to me like a more dramatic and potentially time-consuming strategy for dealing with plagiarism. Chris Carey to whom I am indebted for the link to the DoshDosh post says he has used the DoshDosh strategy effectively.

The DoshDosh post also offers some practical advice for bloggers who want traffic and may not yet understand the legal and ethical implications of “borrowing” other people’s work:

When in doubt, always do the courteous thing and credit a website or blog you are taking the content from. And if you are really in need of quality content, either A) write it yourself, B) Hire a blogger or C) get it off free article directories.

Hear, hear!

(image – Bill Davenport, via stock.exchng)

Technorati Tags:

Post from: EveryJoe

Blog Post Pirates At Large

It is said that Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike competition in Monte Carlo, Monaco. He came third.

More recently, noted blogger Chris Pirillo had his identity “kidnapped” on social networking site Pownce.

As we welcome and delight in all the possibilities of the new world of online social networking, we need to recognize that for many people the sheer number and variety of social networking sites and tools can be quite overwhelming.

And any serious business strategy around blogging and social networking has to come up with some good answers for questions about how the identities of individuals (and companies) are presented online, how those identities can be misrepresented and how they can be kept “intact” and updated accurately.

However sophisticated the technology, managing our respective identities in a Web 2.0 world requires some vigilance and self-help.

Respected Web strategist Jeremiah Owyang says we need a “single, trusted and protected identity system“.

He notes that Open ID is supposed to provide that solution but acknowledges that, as I for one can attest, the Open ID system while wonderfully logical, has a geekiness about it that makes it a hard sell for a mass market. (And after writing that sentence I went to look for the OpenID identity I registered when I first found out about the system, but could not find any information about it on my computer or in the notebook I keep with various usernames and such!)

Jeremiah says:

We need a system that we can all trust where we own and can confirm our data and profile information, can control different privacy permissions within our network (friends, family, work, other) and give us the ability to remove, export or delete it.

My LinkedIn Bloggers colleague Dennis McDonald is not sure about Jeremiah’s proposal. In “Do We Need ‘Portable Relationship Maps’ for Social Networks?” he questions the feasibility of establishing a standardized way of mapping our social relationships. He would not like to see “a standardization effort emerge that might thwart the ability of networks to compete on different features and benefits that center around relationships”.

Much as I would like a simpler system, I am inclined at this stage to agree with Dennis.

The next post in this two part series gives an example of steps we can take to manage and safeguard our own online identity.

Post from: EveryJoe

Managing Identity in a Web 2.0 World – Part 1: The Challenge

The Festival is for employees and decision-makers of AMP from all departments and is designed for teams and business units to co-operate across traditional working boundaries. For those who can’t get to the Sydney venue, there are online arrangements, including webcasts and podcasts.

With 3,500 employees, some 1,900 independent planners, AU$122 billion (say US$103 billion) in funds under management and a leading role in the Australian superannuation field, AMP is no lightweight. So when I got the call some time ago from Annalie Killian -”Catalyst for Magic” – to present a couple of workshops, on Web 2.0 and Blogging, respectively, I was very pleased. Not just for the personal challenge but because I’m delighted to see a major Australian corporation setting a high bar example by providing a forum for its employees to look at and workshop the topics of today and the future. And bringing a high calibre team of presenters together from around the world to make it a truly empowering event.

For example, keynote speakers and topics include:

• Dr Daniel Erasmus, Fellow of the Rotterdam School of Management, on “The Economy of Ideas, the Global Village and future scenarios for the Information Society” – Dr Erasmus is the creator of the world’s first wiki on scenario planning and thinking.
• Roger Dennis from Christchurch, New Zealand, on “Know First, Be First, Profit First: Trends that will transform our world and Financial Services” “Harnessing the lunatic fringe: Innovating in Financial Services by looking beyond the traditional boundaries” – he has the IdeaPort blog on innovation, new technology and fringe scanning
• Chris Shipley, Executive Producer of the famed DEMO events and co-founder of the Guidewire Group, is speaking on “What’s cool and what’s cold? The entrepreneurs and new technologies that are redefining life as we know it” – she posts on the DEMOletter blog

Another keynote presenter is Dr Jane McGonigal on “The games people play. What business needs to know about this exploding phenomenon”. Last year, Dr McGonigal was included in MIT’s Technology Review TR35 list of top innovators under the age of 35. And on her blog the other week, in anticipation of visiting the city on the harbour, wondered if she has any friends in Sydney.

Thanks to Ben Leeson media relations consultant for AMP, for help with some background for this post. I should mention too that the Innovation and Thought Leadership Festival is an internal event for AMP, but Ben has kindly offered to respond to any enquiries: you can reach him at ben(dot)leeson(at)amp(dot)com(dot)au.

Technorati Tags: AMP, thought leadership, innovation, scenarios, future thinking, finance, investment, financial services, Sydney, Annalie Killian

Post from: EveryJoe

Innovation and Thought Leadership Festival in Sydney Next Week

The first site my online search brought up was the BBC, which displays the image, with the explanation

The jagged emblem, based on the date 2012, comes in a series of shades of pink, blue, green and orange and will evolve in the run-up to the Games.

and quotes the organising committee chairman “Seb Coe” as declaring:

“This is the vision at the very heart of our brand”.

I presume he knows what that means. I find it obscure.

Seth is less than complimentary about Lord Sebastian Coe’s commentary.

And I can’t help wondering whether the organisers, or their designers, or their PR people, took account of the potential impact of social media.

And if so, did they expect that one video, for example, could in a matter of hours attract a claimed 10,000 signatures of protest? And what strategy did they devise to deal with that? No doubt all will be revealed in the fullness of time.

Or not.

RIDICULOUS!! It’s impossible for this logo to be any worse. There are far better logos sent in by the public (logo 1 and 6 on the link on the last page!). Please London Olympic Committee—-it’s not too late to change it! The deformed swastika has to go! How on earth does this inspire anyone?! It makes me feel depressed and ashamed! I’m 17 and this is certainly not ‘cool’!!

That’s the tone of a number of comments I’ve read. The swastika comment must hurt. It’s a good symbol in Bali, for instance, but not in the UK.

Mind you, the other logos depicted in the video above would not make me sit up in my chair.

And it’s not that I underestimate in any way the challenge the organising committee and the designers faced.

In fact, until I worked on some major public events some years ago, I didn’t have any comprehension of how challenging it is to create a logo that is going to fulfill all the demands to be made on it.

As a commenter on one blog post puts it:

An Olympic logo is more than just a logo, it is the basis for a graphic system of signage, typography, merchandise, iconography, and even architecture.

And before you get to actually doing those things and showing other event partners how to implement the design so that it works with their own logos, there is the challenge of getting a design which:

• the design firm is happy to have their name on
• the committee or committees who must approve it are happy – most of the members probably knowing next to nothing about design except that they “know what they like”
• the organisation paying the designers’ bill is not going to be outraged
• if it’s being paid for with public money the politicians are not going to cave in at the first sign of any negative public or media reaction
• the media are not going to savage it irretrievably
• the design community is not going to disown or scorn it

Not easy, if actually possible, for everyone to win.

And certainly in the days when I was working on this sort of challenge we did not have to deal with the sort of avalanche of comment, satire, and instant petition-generation that the London Olympics organising committee now has to deal with. A couple of grumpy newspaper articles, a few letters to the editor, perhaps some letters to the Prime Minister. All fairly manageable with a reasonably seasoned, road travelled ex-journalist PR person or two on staff.

Different story now with all these tools for the citizenry to voice their opinions and spread them around the planet instantly.

It would be interesting to know how much notice design companies are taking of the current furore, how that will affect their briefing of clients, how they will handle logo launches in future.

And let’s get real, it’s not just the bloggers, because mainstream media are picking up on – or actually running (e.g. the BBC) the blogs. See for example the News Ltd comment in Adelaide, Australia:

Within hours of the launch, an online petition was set up asking for a new logo or a return to the bid design. By late Monday, the petition had received more than 5500 signatures.

Blogs on newspaper Web sites for The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the British Broadcasting Corp. and Design Week magazine all contained negative comments on the design.

And as governments, whether national, state/provincial or local, are often footing the bill for bid design and event design, how much notice are the relevant or could-be-relevant public officials taking of these events?

There’s got to be a public affairs company out there already putting together their risk-management kit for just such a situation.

Or not?

Perhaps there have to be several incidents like this before people gear up, so as not to be caught flat-footed by the suddenness and pervasiveness of a social media facilitated response to a launch.

(Update June 7: see also Susan Gunelius’ post on an absurd amount of money to pay for a logo)

Technorati Tags: London 2012 Olympics logo, London Olympic logo, Lord Coe, design, social media, bloggers, video, London Olympics, PR, public affairs

Post from: EveryJoe

Social Media on London Olympics Logo

That was a while ago and shows that in fact I wasn’t thinking a lot about succession planning.

My friend Stephen Sandor, an insurance expert and Principal of Complete Cover, has helped me understand the importance of a more comprehensive approach to succession planning, and by no means just for corporations. It’s just as essential for the smallest “mom and pop” business as for the multinational corporation.

Not just in terms of the people involved, but also, and importantly, in terms of functions and responsibilities.

Such as blogging.

Isn’t that being a bit too particular?

Not really. Experienced bloggers will tell you that however much they enjoy it, there is a lot of commitment involved and a lot of time to be invested. And there are plenty of extra challenges for corporate bloggers, which do not need to be faced, or not so much, by individual, freelance bloggers.

If a CEO or other senior executive in a corporation is the key blogger and succeeds in establishing a blog as a very effective channel for the corporation to communicate interactively with customers and would-be customers, and if that executive moves on, whether retiring or going to another company, is all that investment of time (which equals money) to be wasted?

Wouldn’t it be better to have a plan, and people, in place to ensure continuity?

Yes, you could wait till someone moves on or is about to move on and then nominate someone to step into the breach. But how confident can the corporation be that the nominated “someone” is going to be able to handle immediately the challenges of writing well, consistently, appropriately, interestingly, without having had any serious preparation?

In his post Boeing Quietly Masterminds First Ever Corporate Blog Spinoff, Rohit Bhargava, VP Interactive Marketing at Ogilvy Worldwide, tells the story of a very neat corporate blog transition in corporate blog authoring.

The story is particularly entertaining because when Randy Baseler, Chief Marketing Officer and author of the eponymous Randy’s Journal, retired from the company after thirty plus years of service and having built up a loyal readership for the blog, the corporation found another Randy in an appropriate position and ready to take on the challenge.

So it’s still Randy’s Journal, the main obvious differences being that:

a) the author is now Randy Tinseth, Chief Marketing Officer for Boeing Commercial Airlines in Seattle and

b) his picture has replaced that of the original Randy.

As Rohit remarks:

Just wait – in time this may become the definitive case study for other corporations dealing with the challenge of replacing retiring or defecting corporate bloggers without losing the credibility and voice they have spent months or years building.

Not every company will be able to replace a prominent blogger with one of the same name, and I haven’t read anywhere that Boeing had the whole exercise planned in advance. Maybe they did. Maybe they were just lucky.

But whatever the case with Boeing, why would a company rely on luck, assuming they see strategic value in blogging? Why not have a plan in place? This could include having one or more (preferably more) bloggers understudying the most prominent blogger, who might or might not be the CEO, so that when the time comes there is someone experienced in corporate blogging and with a good understanding of the public relations and governance sensitivities.

There is another issue here. Is it a good idea, in terms of continuity and succession planning, for the company’s blog, or most prominent blog, to carry the name of the current author? Would it not be better to have a name which allowed for an easier transition of authors?

Then again, something corporate and generic such as “The Boeing Blog” might not have attracted the readership of the very personally named – and authored – “Randy’s Journal”.

via: Digital Media Wire

Post from: EveryJoe

Succession Planning for Corporate Blogs

That would be interesting, although New Orleans is too far for me to contemplate getting to right now, especially by the middle of next week.

But it led me to thinking about just what is involved in blogging a conference, on a basis similar to a journalist covering a conference. And about what conference organizers might need to do to make sure the blogging process works.

Looking for a few clues on what would be involved, I came across a great post from one of my colleagues from Business Blog Consulting, the highly respected consultant Josh Hallett, who specializes in the convergence of social media with public relations and marketing.

In How to Blog a Conference, Josh provides a framework for a strategic approach to the task and a most impressive checklist of what is needed in terms of hardware, software and logistics.

As at least one comment on the blog remarks, this post provides a playbook for anyone who takes on the responsibility of blogging a conference.

It’s also an invaluable resource for event organizers who may be considering inviting bloggers to cover events.

After reading through all the things that need to be covered, my feeling was that any conference organizer should think more in terms of having a blogging team rather than expecting any one blogger to cover a whole conference adequately. To illustrate that point, here’s a sample of what Josh says is involved just in the planning stage:

Assemble your blog team in advance and review the plan for the event. Much of this can be done virtually if your team is spread out across the country. Make sure everybody has the necessary logins/passwords for the blog and any other software tools, i.e. Flickr, etc. Have the bloggers do a test post in advance of the event.

Next up, develop a plan for who is covering what. Do you need to plan around travel schedules? Are there particular sessions that somebody wants to attend? Are there some topics that suit a particular blogger because of their profession or interests? Everybody should know their roles/schedules in advance of arriving.

If possible, schedule a quick meeting onsite in advance of the event once everybody arrives. Use this time to figure out your connectivity solutions. If a blogger is not able to get online determine a posting solution. Often this will involve a USB drive. The offline blogger can write-up the session and then hand off to somebody else for posting. As part of your schedule, be sure to give some time off during the day. If you have a photographer or a tech guru determine who will be responsible for integrating photos or other multi-media files.

This sort of detail made it clear to me that blogging a conference professionally is no cakewalk.

Interestingly, after reading Josh’s post and commencing to write this, I found that Josh is actually blogging the WOMBAT event in New Orleans.

One thing I’m still wondering about is what an official conference blogger should do if she/he starts to pick up that sessions are not going well, and/or participants are not happy with the way the event is proceeding. Should they blog that, fearlessly, or could that be seen as a breach of faith with the organizers? Could be an interesting point of discussion between the blogger/teamleader and the conference organizers.

Post from: EveryJoe

Blogging a Conference Professionally is No Cakewalk

Are you perhaps in a line of business where not having a blog makes you the odd one out and you’re not sure what to do about it?

Would you like to start but your legal person says to be careful and you have so many other things to think about that here you are, six months or a year down the track, being careful, but with no blog?

Or are you confused by conflicting advice about blogging from well-meaning and expert or would-be expert friends and colleagues – do it/don’t do it, great for the company/ bad for the company, make sure you use/don’t use, blogging platform X?  

These are common situations. Which is why my advice consistently to business owners is to calmly form their own assessment and establish a basic risk management strategy and get started – or get someone in the company, who seems to know what they are doing and has the owner’s confidence, to get started.

The fact is, while you can read a lot, listen to podcasts and generally research blogging, if you want to really understand blogging and what it can do for your business, there is no substitute for getting started and doing it.

Brian Oberkirch has an excellent post how to stop worrying and launch your blog: he lists reasons commonly advanced for not getting to the point of launching a blog, and explains very directly why not to let these get in the way.

And I like the fact that he does not gloss over the time commitment involved:

…however much time you think social media will take, add more.  What you save in money, you’ll spend in time.  Edgework is time intensive, hand-crafted.  Lots of one-offs.  You’re building the tribe one person at a time.  Plan to put in the hours.

Spot on! 

Post from: EveryJoe

Why Not to Hold Off Your Blog Launch Till You Have it All Set