Practical Wisdom from the Entrepreneurs Creative Edge by William Reed

Are you still on the fence about blogging? Aware of its importance, but not sure if you have time to blog, or how to get started and stick with it? Do you hesitate to express yourself in writing, or wonder if anyone will read what you have written?

Words are as important in communication and persuasion as ever, but now they can be delivered even more effectively through voice and video, which blogs can easily accommodate. Social Media is advancing so quickly that it can be really confusing about where to start. Wired.com recently posted an article entitled, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004. http://budurl.com/2d9l

The article put forth the opinion that blogging was old hat, and that it was time to move on to more nimble messaging in Social Media. Many of the respondents disagreed vehemently. If you've ever been frustrated by having to leave a phone message in a 15-second time limit, then you'll know why.

In fact, the more savvy users on Twitter use the 140-character messages including a short URL to lead people to their blog! Your blog is the hub of your personal branding, the Grand Central Station for your public personality.

The way to use Social Media is not as a substitute for blogging, but as a conduit to your blog. A well written blog can create trust, enhance your credibility, build global connections, give people an opportunity to know you much better, and build a base of raving fans.

These are the people who will buy your products and services, hire you for a job, give you media coverage, become joint venture partners, and join your mailing list where they can keep in contact. The more you put into the mix, the greater the opportunities that become available to you over time.

Blogging has become the resume of Web 2.0. Remember the days when people sent out dozens or even hundreds of resumes to companies on high-quality paper hoping for some response? Not only is this like fishing in a lake with no fish, it also exposes you to the stress of waiting and wondering. A blog can serve up your personal brand far better than a resume. It is a living multimedia platform, and it works for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, whether or not you are seeking employment.

Two branding experts enthusiastically endorsed blogging on the Open Forum, in a program called Let’s Hear it for the Blog. Seth Godin’s asserted that your blog forces you to do the thinking and enter the conversation. Tom Peters said that blogging had completely changed his outlook on life and that, “no single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging.” http://budurl.com/4a6h

PBS in cooperation with Wharton Business School recently released a report that voted the Internet to be the most important innovation in the last 30 years, and Social Networking was ranked to be the 20th most important innovation on the list of the top 30 innovations.

Blogging is one of the most powerful tools of Social Media, and an increasingly important part of personal and business branding. The blog is where you educate, entertain, engage and enrich your reader. Even if only a few people read it in the beginning, the discipline of producing a blog and posting to it a few times a week will help you develop both personally and professionally.

You don’t have to have a blog. Most people don’t. However, trying to brand yourself without a strong online presence is running the risk of becoming virtually invisible, or at least missing the boat on one of the best branding opportunities ever. Before you decide that you are too busy to blog, take a closer look at how you might benefit from a blog. Visit the following link to answer a simple questionnaire online, and see if you are ready to benefit from blogging. http://budurl.com/8wem

Although blogging can range from free to minimal cost, it does take a power boost to launch yourself into the blogosphere. You can set up a blog for free and start posting in a few minutes, but without some guidance you may find that you quickly run out of ideas, lose direction, lack originality in design, or find that you attract more spam than you imagined possible.

If you are going to set up a blog for business or personal branding, why not learn from one of the top experts in the field? I have tied up with Denise Wakeman, one of the leading business blogging and social media consultants on the web, to offer a series of teleseminars to help people get started in building a better blog. To find out more, subscribe to my blog for updates on this powerful tool for personal　branding.

http://www.EntrepreneursCreativeEdge.com 

William Reed http://www.entrepreneurscreativeedge.com