ATLANTA, GA - There was time when I blogged three or four times a week. Really good, thought provoking posts, too! I've been a blogger since 2004, and I think my most inspired years were 2005-2007. If I'm not mistaken, at one time I had +500 posts on this blog, but in 2008 I removed roughly a hundred of them because I felt like they weren't relevant to anyone but me. Mistake.
I should have kept them up ...
As a business owner, I encourage all of my colleagues to blog. Some have an easier time with this than others. My Director of Online Marketing, Susanna Boyd, loves to blog. Susanna LOVES paper crafting, which is basically making cards and gifts out of odds and ends. Her blog, CardOfTheWeek.com, is read by thousands of hobbyists each month, and two years ago, she started an online community for paper crafters.
This week, Susanna's community, called PaperCraftPlanet.com, admitted its TWENTY THOUSANDTH member. Amazing! Susanna has recruited advertisers, she has an editorial platform and contributing writers, and she goes to trade shows to interview paper crafting "celebrities" for her community. She doesn't do it for the money. It's a labor of love, which is why so many paper crafters think Susanna is the bomb.
My point is this: For a while last year, I began to think that -- for me, anyway -- blogging was simply a means to a marketing end. It was about being #1 on Google for my primary keywords, and once that was accomplished -- what was the point of blogging more? After all, I had a company to run.
Turns out I was wrong. The primary benefit of blogging is to develop and maintain a teachable point of view on something of value. It's about learning to communicate more effectively. And as Seth says in the video above, "to contribute something to the conversation." Like Susanna.
