As much as I hate to admit this, I'm not a great blogger. This is evidenced by the fact that prior to my last post, I hadn't updated this in over a year. I could go on about all of the things that happened that got in the way of posting - things like growing Mzinga into the leading provider of business social media solutions, joining the board at Innocentive, becoming a faculty member at Wharton, etc. - but what ultimately matters is that I'm back.

There are two questions some of you may be asking. The first question is why are you blogging? The second is how do you find time to blog?

Part 1: Benefits of Blogging

Blogging does all of the following:

1. It communicates a message to a larger audience. I can talk to someone face to face or have conversations here at work, but for me, to share ideas with people outside my daily circle makes the value of the conversation that much greater.

2. Blogging creates transparency and transparency often leads to trust. I don't always have the opportunity to interact with everyone face to face or on a personal level. Most people I interact with don't even really get to know who I am as a person. Blogging is a great way to show another side of yourself in hopes that it showcases something positive that people will respond well to. In my case, I'm hoping that this blog will

   
• help the public understand my core messages
   
• educate current and prospective customers on the benefits of community and how it will help their businesses
   
• help Mzinga employees get to know me better

3. Blogging forces you to think and constantly re-evalute where you stand on certain issues and how you view the world. I talk about social media, community building, and business practices all day, but to actually sit down and formulate my messages into text is a different, but rewarding experience.

Source

Part 2: Executing a Business Blogging Strategy

The first part about blogging is easy. We all can understand the benefits of blogging, but to actually sit down and execute it is a different story.

I'm hoping to demonstrate that business leaders can blog and that it can be facilitated by doing the following:

1. MAKE THE TIME. Everyone has busy schedules, especially me, but by scheduling blogging time on a daily or weekly basis, I'm more likely to do it. It helps to actually see alotted time and then get into the habit of keeping the schedule.

2. READ AND LIST. A lot of the inspiration for posts can come from reading articles or daily experiences. I'm starting to get into the habit of emailing myself blog ideas and creating a running list of posts I want to publish.

3. ASK FOR HELP. I have a very, very busy schedule and sometimes by the time I get a blog idea, jot my thoughts down, and then go to publish, my time's run out. Luckily, I have co-workers here at Mzinga like Alexa Scordato and Aaron Strout who help me get my content up on the web.

Like most things in life, it’s hard to perfect something right away. The only thing we can do is work on improving and that’s how I’m going to approach my blogging strategy. Stay tuned for more posts!