Effort Involved with Blogging

At a recent conference I spoke at, I remember one of the audience members asking, “When does anyone have the time to blog?” 

The issue of effort involved is an interesting one.  I think there is a common conception that blogging is some form of activity that exists completely outside the realm of a professional’s daily activities. 

That simply isn’t the case.  In every company where I’ve worked, there has always been a practice of circulating industry-specific news and information around.  Every day, you wake up and go through your industry pubs, review the top-line news, etc.  When you see something of interest, you paste it into an e-mail and pass it on, possibly with some sort of header describing why you have passed it on.

Well, blogging doesn’t have to be a far cry from the activity just described.  Instead of pasting that interesting article into an e-mail, you are simply pasting that interesting article into a field.  Instead of hitting ‘send’, you are hitting ‘publish.’ 

The fundamental difference is what happens when you hit ‘send’ versus what happens when you hit ‘publish.’  When you hit ‘publish,’ suddenly your interesting story is potentially there for all the world to see. 

What that basically means is that there is going to be a greater sense of accountability involved in what you are writing and that is the effort involved with blogging – everything else is really layered into the machinations of your everyday life to begin with.