Walking the Blog

You know, it's a pain in the patootie to do blogs and articles. I tried. No, that's not true, I didn’t try, I abdicated. I set out to create a blog and within just a few posts it became obvious I didn't want to fit the process into my already busy schedule… and so I didn't.

Oh, I tried the "hire a ghostwriter" approach, but blogs are about being real. It just didn't work for me, seeing the lame articles I got. Sure, it may work for some "I don't care" marketer to throw up any old thing on the web. And yes, maybe I put too much emphasis on the depth and quality of what is, after all, a web log. But that's me, and that's them.

Fact is, blogs and social media may cost us nothing, but they demand a LOT of time, focus and energy. For companies who want to market, there are a LOT of easier ways to make a big splash… including in some cases radio, television and direct mail. Those things cost mucho dinero, while social media -- blogging, facebook, youtube, twitter and all the rest -- essentially cost nothing - zip, nada, zero.

But blogging takes time. And not just the time to write and post blogs, but the time to build community. That's what web 2.0 is all about, after all, building community. Not creating immediate knee-jerk responses, not post-and-sell, but generating genuine conversation. Once the conversation has begun, well, it takes a time commitment to keep it going and growing. Maybe I was more afraid of that bigger time commitment than even the commitment to write blog articles every week.

Nevertheless, I have been awakened by the passing of a year… a YEAR… since my last post. A year of my life, a year of involvement in my blog, a year of some incredible marketing campaigns and discoveries, of breaking new boundaries, entering new territories and pushing the envelope… and of building relationships. That doesn't mean it's all gone. It just means I was so focused on doing the blog and social media "right" I lost the focus on building the relationships, the community. So I post this post, a new day, starting anew, and bringing whatever knowledge and resources I have into this space and looking for that community. And I look to you all to help keep me on track ;)