You Get Out What You Put In

Blogging is the best thing since sliced bread!  I’d be willing to bet that as a business professional who is in tune with current trends has heard that no less than a hundred times within the past year.  There are many reasons why a business/company would want to blog…

It allows you to be the expert in your field, it creates easily accessible and interactive communications with your clients, customers, and media channels.  It can also assist in internal collaborations, recruitment, product testing/data gathering, and last but not least search engine optimization.

Wow!  Sounds great, huh?  Well, there is a catch to all of the splendor…this one you’ve heard thousands of times throughout your lifetime.  It is the age old saying “You get out what you put in!”  Sound familiar?  I’ve heard it a thousand times too.

Yes, it is true that blogs are very powerful and that they are a great source for communication, interactivity, and user-generated content.  It should be noted however, that having your own blog is not completely automated.  In other words, it is not a “set it and forget it” or “build it and they will come” type of scenario.  In fact, the most successful blogs are contributed to extremely regularly…the authors/owners of these blogs have made the commitment to creating posts on their blogs quite frequently.

Ultimately, the success of your blog is determined by the following factors…the amount of time (and frequency) you are willing to dedicate to your blog, the vision and goals you have for your blog, the “uniqueness factor” and quality of the content on your blog, and the amount of patience you have while waiting for results to come from your blog.  In general, the more you can contribute to each of these factors the more successful your blog will be.

So, it is fair to say that when it comes to having a company blog, it is of the utmost importance that it is realized that “You get out what you put in”.