My suggestion about your voice is think of how you interact with your buddies when you’re out on the weekend. I don’t mean all the casual ways you communicate. What I mean is your relaxed, casual voice that knows what you know. You’re a professional, but you’re a person first. And you create relationships with other people – even in your business.

My desire for blogging is to strike up a conversation with people that share my obsession about how to make businesses better places to work. My management consulting experiences, reading the hundreds of books on my bookshelf, and perusing the blogosphere fill me with ideas. There is validation that comes from contributing to a conversation with smart people about something I feel is important. Without my blog, I lack the opportunity to share my ideas or get rapid feedback.

At this point, I have not yet experienced the interaction with people I hope to create.
Perhaps, I come across as lecturing and not conversational. I have also received feedback that I am too colloquial in my tone. I have yet to find the mix of content and style to get people to participate with me.

From a traffic standpoint, my blog is moving up in Technorati, traffic to my website is up, and my e-zine now has over 100 subscribers. My site has been found and linked to from some unexpected places. My customers have found my blog and it makes them feel good about how substantial my knowledge is. So, blogging is good for business, but my reason for blogging is to build a community I would enjoy being part of.

Things will really change for you, your business and your website once you start blogging. The web becomes alive. It’s incredible, really. And the openness of other bloggers to sharing, giving and helping is truly remarkable. Reminds me constantly that people’s true nature is to care about and help each other.

I’ve felt too “behind the 8-ball” of traditional marketing, in the way it’s commonly described in the blogosphere as a “one-way conversation” — I speak, they listen (hopefully). Frankly, I’m tired of that.

My best moments in business are the ones when I’m interacting, sharing, and celebrating with people. I enrich them, and they enrich me. Sometimes I think it may be true that I learn as much from my clients as they learn from me… and other times, I know it’s true.

So, like Mark said, as soon as my blog is ready, I’m ready!

Yeah, often that’s the case. People have trepidations about learning something new – then they learn it and find out how easy it is or how much value it adds to their life. I fall into that category too from time to time.

“My experience is that people simply have a tough time accepting things they either don’t understand or they misunderstand.”

is totally true for me. I am starting to see the value and feel the creative energy that a blog can release. I can parallel this to being afraid of a wiki after I had invested so much learning into the other setup. After a week of allowing myself to have some angst about it, I slid right into the wiki. Until then though it was tough.
thanks though for your input, I just bought a wordpress book and am going to jump into the research phase of what kind of blog to start.

You’re right. Keeping our focus is quite important. If we don’t…it’s likely our business suffers. And perhaps our clients too.

Have a great Sunday.

I certainly agree, Char. As hard as I can work, there are few things sweeter in my life than my 3-year-old daughter knocking on my door 22-times each day to ask me if I’m off work yet.

And, she’s a great teacher.

Huh…hadn’t thought about a signature being too long. Guess I haven’t run into that yet. Thanks for the heads up though.

And thanks for your patience on being SOAPed.

Char

I hear you. I feel the same way. I love being married and having two young children – wouldn’t trade it for anything. Yet, at times, I wonder how much more I could be ‘getting’ in the blogosphere if I could work more – like I did when I was single. Yet, balance is also important to a full life.

I have met so many great bloggers who are ready to share advice, help you out of technology jam, and give you a virtual pat on the back regularly.

I just went to leave a comment on a wordpress.com blog, but found that my new comment sig held too many characters. Most seem fine but perhaps I’ll find this happen more often.

Don’t worry about the SOAPing. I know how it is getting around to writing a critique.

I saw your new design. I really love it. I still owe you a SOAPing – which I’ll get to early this week. Last week was just a bear.

Let me know if the new comment signature makes a difference.

I’ve recently made some changes to my blog design and would appreciate your comments if you have any spare time.

Also, I’m going to test out a new comment signature (as in your post a while back) to see if my traffic from comments changes any.

Oh, I think BA already exists in full force in the blogosphere. And, it sounds like a fun post to write.

Stuart

Blogholics Nonymous? (don’t forget to ‘brand’ !)

Mark Silver, so nice to see you here and flipped by Dawud.

Will there be chapters of Blogaholics Anonymous opening up?

Thanks.

Stuart Baker
http://www.consciouscooperation.com