about their blogging
efforts. Now as we move to 2013, I find it interesting to look back at the
early days of business blogging. I will only include cases from people who are
still blogging now. These cases have not appeared on this blog before.
James Robertson is the
Managing Director of Step Two Designs, a content management consultancy located
in Sydney, Australia. James still writes the blog, Column Two. He started
blogging in June 2002 when the his business changed it's focus to pure
consulting in the areas of knowledge management, content management and
intranets. Looking for ways to increase its business profile, James saw that
blogging was a good way of communicating in a different way to those interested
in these topics.
So basically his blog was initially
a marketing tool for the business first and foremost, with the goal being to
drive traffic to the site, hopefully leading to greater sales of our reports
and new consulting clients. In addition, there was a secondary goal to provide
him with a personal communications tool to share his thoughts. In both cases,
it certainly was a "work tool", not a personal diary.
James found that his blog was hugely successful. In
the first two months of posting the blog, traffic to the site almost doubled, which
was quite amazing. At the time of our interview in 2005, the blog was the
consistently highest source of visitors to the site, rating ahead of all the
articles that he published. More importantly, James constantly bumped into
people at conferences and the like who say: "you're the one that runs that
blog, aren't you!".
Having a picture clearly displayed on his blog helps
in this, and many people have commented that it was useful when wanting to pick
him out of a crowd, or when he was meeting people for the first time. So as a
"profile raising" tool, it has certainly worked. And as a tip to those
running blogs, James advised, don't put your personal identity in the
background! He says to clearly
list yourself as the author on the main page, providing e-mail and web links.
Give a small bio of yourself, and include a photo if at all possible. Beyond just
giving your blog a personalized identity, it makes the words much more your
voice than some corporate message.
James also found that his blog worked well as a
marketing tool, as it operates somewhat like a newspaper that he owns. It's his
blog and his content, so there's nothing to say that he can't use it to market
his reports, workshops and activities. James doesn't think the readers mind
either. Using the blog allows him to remind people about early-bird dates for
workshops, or to post new reviews of our reports and products. These all have a
noticeable impact on our sales and registrations. All in all, it has been a
valuable investment of his time, and one that he will continue to make into the
foreseeable future.
At the time we talked, James had made the decision to
increase the amount of unique (self-written) content on his blog, beyond the
links to other articles and resources. The objective of this was to increase
the value of the blog, and to ensure that it continued to be useful to his
readers and the wider blogosphere. James feels that the timing was good for
this change as he was doing quite a few interesting (and very diverse) projects
at the time. These were forcing him to explore new areas of thinking, and it's
the insights (however small) that he was hoping to blog more of. The challenge
was, of course, finding time to write this additional content. So far, he has
managed to write a number of entries designed to be thought-provoking. James felt
that only time will tell whether he is able to keep up with these writing
demands.
James feels that these changes are incremental,
however, and the fundamental purpose of the blog as a marketing tool continues
unchanged. When we spoke it continued to meet this objective well, More
significantly, James now had two blogs. One was external, which is the topic of
this discussion, and now another was an entirely internal blog. Every staff
member in the business now has an internal blog that is used to keep everyone
up to date on compnay activities, major changes, new clients and the like. This
internal blog has proven to be a great tool. Since many in his firm were traveling,
or out at client sites, the blogs make it easy to catch up on what's happening,
and to feel part of the business. When we spoke, James posted upwards of 6-10
very short blog entries every day internally, and it's his main way of
communicating to all his staff.
These internal blogs are part of his company’s
efforts to apply good knowledge management principles to its own work (beyond
just recommending them to their clients). The purpose is not to necessarily
convey information, but simply "awareness". If people have a vague
recollection that some relevant to their current project has been done
somewhere else in the team, they can then chase up the specific details. In
other words, all actual knowledge is conveyed person-to-person, but the blogs
help connect people.
The biggest challenges James faced was finding the
time. What he ended up doing was increasing the working day in order to fit in
both his blogging and other work. Basically, when he first got into work, it
took him about an hour to get through most (not all!) of his e-mails, and his
blogging. Only then was he able to start into the actual work. While this can
sometimes be a burden, he generally found it's a useful way of letting his
brain slowly wake up in the morning, before starting into business or client
work.
The blog also helped James to be disciplined. He set
himself a schedule of posting at least one blog entry a day, if at all possible.
This was an entirely self-imposed goal, and he didn't imagine that anyone would
complain if it didn't happen. It did however help to ensure that he sets aside
the time to make blogging actually happen.
James also found that his blog was a useful way of
filing away information that he personally might want in the future. So instead
of bookmarking something, he blogs it. This is an added "what's in it for
him” factor that makes it easier to devote the time required to keep the blog
ticking over. James found that there are also some "slow news days"
in which there isn't much to post.
In early 2005, James’ blog was primarily a "link"
blog. That is, the many entries point to recently published articles, books,
and other similar resources. In this way, his blog acted as a human-filtered
"aggregator" of useful information within the specific field in which
he works. This content came from his keeping up to date on other blog feeds,
mailing lists, conferences and resource sites.
His original content came directly from his
experiences in the field, consulting to clients. James was constantly on the
look out for client issues or approaches that might have broader appeal. Many
of these got written in the articles that he wrote (2-3 a month), with the rest
going into blog entries. In this way, his blog was part of a whole
"communications plan", with each communications medium playing a
part:
- KM Column articles: detailed step-by-step guides to approaching an
issue or tackling a problem.
- CM Briefings: one page articles that discuss a single concept or
approach at a high level.
- Blog entries: personal opinions or challenges to the status quo.
This is where he can speak in his own voice, and present opinions without
having to take a necessarily neutral perspective.
James sits at the intersection of quite a few
different fields: knowledge management, content management, intranets,
usability, information architecture, XML, change management. As a
"boundary spanner,” he hoped to expose people to information and ideas
that they wouldn't have otherwise come across. This was, he thought, the main
reason why people read his blog. He pulled together an interesting mix of
articles and resources that helped them to do their job at least a little
better. Basically, James did the hard work of "filtering" the huge
amount of information on the web for his readers, sparing them the effort.
Within the areas in which he works, he puts a lot of effort into keeping his
"finger on the pulse", and generally having at least a vague idea of everything
that is going on.
James benefited from reading other blogs. As a consultant,
and occasional "guru", he is expected to know everything that's going
on. While this is clearly impossible, he does like to "know a little about
a lot", and blogs are the single best way of keeping track of activities and
opinions from across the globe. Without blogs, there would be no way to keep
track of what is happening in the 4-5 professional disciplines that he works
in.
In 2005 James tracked almost 90 blogs in his news
aggregator. These covered a wide range of topics, and include both
"link" blogs and blogs that publish commentary and essays. He found
them all useful, and with a news aggregator it's easy to lose sight of which
information is coming from which blog. James found that some of the most
valuable blogs are those written by the practitioners in the field, rather than
the gurus or the vendors. At their best, these blogs convey the real-life
experiences of what works, and more importantly, what doesn't work. This really
helps him to feel part of a community of practitioners, even if most of these
people are located thousands of miles away.
Since this interview I have met James in person at several conferences. His blog laid the foundation for a richer connection when this occured.