Should you be blogging?
I’ve been hearing more talk on blogging lately from business people that aren’t usually involved with it. When social media comes up in conversation with one of my coworkers, he always asks “I’m not going to have to start blogging now, am I?”
Some good reasons Why you should blog:
1.) You are passionate about something.
2.) You have useful information that others can use.
3.) You want your ideas heard or want them to reach more people than would happen with email or a newsgroup post.
4.) You love a good discussion or debate.
Reasons you should not blog:
1.) You don’t have a passion for the topic. Your posts will be boring and they you will soon get bored with the whole activity.
2.) For reasons good or bad, openness is not valued in your company or situation.
3.) You won’t spend the time to participate in the conversation. Blogs that talk at people as a rule do not do as well.
4.) You don’t see the value, are told to do it, or can’t be yourself.
If you don’t like my list, check out this one Dora Smith sent me: Top Ten Reasons to Blog and Top Ten Not to Blog.
So when it comes to business blogging, who should be doing it, the customer or the employee? In most cases, both. For example, if I want to learn about a CAD products, I’d much rather hear about it from people that use it, not the company that sells it. At the same time, if I wanted to discuss the upcoming version or see things that only the employee has access to, company blogs are great for that. Even better, you can get cross blog discussions going.
I would like to see a few more Solid Edge and Femap blogs coming from real users of these products. It’s a good chance to help out fellow designers and engineers or maybe talk about your own product if your company wants the press. I know a lot of you have small businesses and blogging can help you here. Mack Collier has a good post about how “Blogging Small Businesses have 55% more Traffic, 97% More Inbound Links”
Plus guys like me like to see what the customers are doing. If I can’t get my coworker above to blog, maybe I can get him to read yours 
