The Learning Circuits Blog posted a “big question” for the month of October which asks people to respond to the question “should all learning professionals be blogging?” A lot of educators and others have responded, adding up to 26 at last count, all examining the issue thoroughly.
It got me thinking about whether all professionals in general should be blogging. After all, they are business professionals, experts supposedly in their fields, and they got there by working hard long hours.
Now, modern-thinking businesses expect them to not only continue to work those long hours but include blogging into their schedule.
I remember how tough it was for my father struggling to cope with the new computerized technology as he watched secretaries and receptionists get laid off at work. Instead of being able to have his letters and reports typed up by an expert, he was now forced to do it himself. Memos once dictated and typed up by a secretary or office assistant were now typed by his two fingers via email. I try to imagine him blogging and it’s a joke. He couldn’t understand it even when I tried to explain to him what I did.
While many business professionals are now expected to be computer savvy, some are not “that” savvy. And some of these people are being asked to blog. Should they?
So your blogging challenge this week is to blog about the issue of whether or not professional business folks, experts in their industry, should be blogging. If so, what would make them a blogger worth reading? If not, why?
Previous Blogging Challenges
These blogging challenges are published weekly and are an attempt to kick your blogging ass. They serve to challenge your thinking and efforts in blogging and blog writing. To participate, start challenging yourself now. Today. Go for it. Previous challenges have been:
- Blog About What You Know
- Tell Us a Story
- Top 10 Keywords for Your Blog
- Who Is Linking To You?
- Who is Writing Your Blog
- Describe Your Blogging Audience
- Testing Your Blog Clicking Experience
- Write WordPress Tips
- Comment on 10 Blogs
- Travel Blog – Adventure in Your Back Yard
- Hobby Blogging and Blogging About Your Hobby
- How Do You Blog?
- Blog the Opposite of You
- WordPress Treasure Hunt
- The WordPress Treasure Hunt Continues
- Blog About Those Who Dare to Speak Out
Site Search Tags: blog challenge, blogging challenge, business professionals, professional bloggers, business bloggers, corporate bloggers, who should blog, why blog, why you should blog, why you should not blog
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network
3 Comments
I think professional blogging is a bad idea. What’s intersting is how even if you’re just an employee of a corporation, if you’re the only one blogging about it you can become an unofficial “representative” of the company. Your words reflect the company even though you have no authority to do so.
Cutting and pasting from one of my posts
Blogging requires transparency. I believe the basic question of whether or not your corporation should blog (I call that ‘clogging’), is whether or not you wish to be transparent in your relationships with your clients and also to your competition.
What I know to be true is that, if you do not blog transparently, you will be ignored and destroyed by the blogosphere. Insincerity is easy to observe. It’s most obvious during periods of poor performance with your company. The blog will amplify any behavior by your company. If you try to cover it up with some nice PR, be ready for the backlash. If you’re honest, be ready for the customer appreciation.
In short, if you can not blog transparently, you’re better off not doing it at all!
To paraphrase Blackadder: “Blogging for the sake of blogging is like fitting wheels on a tomato – time consuming and completely unnecessary”.
If you have time, inclination and knowledge to share, then blogging can be an excellent marketing tool. It can also assist in documenting you work for yourself and others and getting feedback.
For the professional and the corporation, a blog is a tool, not a goal.
5 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[...] Business Professionals Blog Lorelle poses a blogging challenge, Should Business Professionals Blog? and I guess if I qualify as a business professional and the consensus is that professionals shouldnot be blogging, too little, too late. [...]
[...] The Audience is Reading The other day I asked the question Should Business Professionals Blog? in response to Lorelle’s blogging challenge. As professional as we want to be we cannot forget the reader. [...]
[...] The latest in Lorelle’s blogging challenge series is a topic I like to discuss a lot – Should Business Professionals Blog?. Mind that neither am I an expert on blogging or psychology nor an executive in any business to make statements. This is purely out of my experience of blogging as a professional. [...]
[...] I recently asked if businesses should blog. Ashley Carr of the The itpr Group wrote in the IT Week Letter asking if blogs can benefit small companies. I liked what was said. There are two issues. Firstly, small businesses tend to have few marketing skills, little time but oodles of passion. So, if a small business does limited marketing, does investing time and effort in an emerging technology give them the best return? Unlikely. [...]
[...] Blogging Challenge: Should All Business Professionals Blog? [...]