Feb
27
2010
Are you sharing your voice?
Author: Stuart R. Crawford
What a crazy week that just finished?
Lots of interest from business in Calgary looking to understand more about the power of social media in business and what tools will serve them the best. How can small businesses take advantage of what these almost mission critical online services? What can they do combined with skilled and trained people for their overall success of business?
All I know, there is more and more information to share with all of you over the next few days, weeks, months and maybe years. Social Technologies are rapidly becoming part of our daily activities if they haven’t already.
First off, the following folks need to be publicly thanked:
- Frank at the Blackfoot Inn – Frank saved the day for us during our Calgary social media training course with a handy USB wireless adapter.
- The entire team at GoForth – Thank you for just being who you guys are and your support of Ulistic
- Mike Iem at Microsoft – Thank you Mike for the opportunity to serve the Microsoft Partner Community once again as part of the 5W25 training sessions.
Lots of discussion this week about how to we can employ Social Media in business and what all of our businesses can do right now to start to build a competitive advantage for themselves online. Don’t take my messaging the wrong way, social media services are still just a spoke in your overall business development activities. It is an awfully big one and gaining in importance.
One of these crucial online or social media services is the power of blogging. How can a blog benefit your business? Why should you blog? I personally feel if you are a President of a corporation or small business and you do not have a blog you are doing a disservice to your staff, customers and those in the community who are looking for someone to learn from or follow.
Blogging for me is an essential part of your business recipe book. It doesn’t take much to get started either.
There are a number of reasons why you and your must have a blog. Some of these reason range from being a thought leader in your industry or community right through to having a mechanism for you to share information with your customers and staff. Maybe you simply want to spread the word about the great things your non-profit is doing within the community as well. Blogging in business or community is all about providing valuable content to those who find what you got to say interesting. This can range from those who don’t know you to those who know you best.
What is your story?
We all have a story to tell and the best blogs come from those who take their natural ability to share stories and take these stories into the online world for all to read. Some of the best blogs I follow are simply stories about what and who the reader is or who has influenced them. How can you tell your story online and position yourself in front of the pack? Who can you influence without knowing who they are?
A great blog can do this for you, sometimes all it takes is for you to simply start. Get down in the ready position and fire your own starting pistol. Over the years, working with many Calgary business folks and all the way up to my facilitation duties with Heartland Tech Groups, I have found simply starting to be one of the biggest challenges for a number of business owners. Sometimes we just need to shelf our fear of looking stupid or failing aside and just get started. I know that is easier said than done for many.
The nice thing with blogs is that you can always go back and tweak it later. But you can’t tweak what you don’t do.
I love the fact in life sometimes we can take the re-test.
