Blogging: Lead By Example

“If you want it enough you’ll make time.”

It’s a phrase I use often in meetings or one-to-one  situations when someone is letting me know how they are super busy and can’t fit “it” into their life.  I’m not different I didn’t ring my mum again this week because I was just too busy.

Of course that’s absolutely nonsense. I chose not to ring her for one of many reasons, all utterly plausible and all legit but the one reason that was not plausible or legit was that I didn’t have time. When I was waiting for the pasta to boil, instead of watching half an hour of the x factor, while waiting to pick my daughter up from yet another dancing lesson all time that could have been better used … but I chose not to.

And so it is with writing a blog. In our office there is a notion from the hierarchy that content is king. I am part of that hierarchy and believe that content is king passionately. Why is Google Google because it has content – lots of it and with it they have huge power. On a different level it’s still the same, if you write a good blog and put that content out there in the ether you see how many people read it -  good content eventually finds its way round and for those that it is addressing it’s important!

I work with some prolific blog writers, mainly technical people who use others’ ramblings to help themselves so feel at one writing articles in the hope that they are giving something back into the environment they take from. However out of that techie-to-techie world getting staff to write blogs or content becomes harder. The Sales Team have come up with some excellent ideas of helping others, answering the questions they had when they started, but their second or third blog becomes harder.  The Administration staff struggle with “who’ll read my blog  anyway” syndrome which is strange because when questioned they all accept they read blogs to help them with day-to-day activities.

Then there is management, it becomes a mix of all the above.

They are not technical enough to write technical to technical.

They are too savvy to write the “Beginner’s Sales” or “How To Guide”.

They are not specialist enough to write “The Top 10 Social Media Skills” or “Top 15 One-to-One Questions”.

They wonder who would read their solutions, help, problems, ideas anyway.

And of course … managers don’t have time!

Written by Adrian Handley, Managing Director, DSCallards