Thank you to Leesa Barnes of Caprica , Mark Evans of B5Media , Mark Kuznicki of Remarkk.com and Ed Lee for joining the NewPath Network on a discussion of Blogging for Fun and Profit.
We had a wonderful turn out of over 25 people at the event and to my surprise there were many bloggers already in the audience.
The highlights of the discussion for me were the insights on how blogs have evolved over time to challenge traditional media, the motivation for blogging and why blogs make sense for a small business.
It was also interesting to hear that blogging is not for everyone. It takes
- commitment to blog (text,video or pod) on a regular basis (some blog at 6am before most of the eastern timezones rise, being a journalist doesn't hurt at all)
- decent writing skills
- a passion to blog about something important to you
I think what is most interesting about blogging is that the person behind the business can shine through. Some of us thought that if you had a splashy web page for your business, then your business would appear larger than it really is, but that is a misleading isn't it? What is more important is content rather than flash -- and blogs seem to be a perfect representation of that -- blogs rarely have pictures other than IN content and they rarely have much decoration. They are about your stories and why we should read you and buy from you rather than someone else.
Here's an innovative example of what I mean.
Oh yes there are pictures from the event:
Here is Alex, Kelly and Ed after the meeting...
And here is Mark, Stephen and Misha enjoying the networking...