Actually, Forrest Gump in this case is Mike Sansone.  No Mike, I merely mean you have made a "Gumpism" out of business blogging.  I first met Mike Sansone at the Blog Business Summit in 2005. For a small town blogger, Mike can make a global splash in the blogosphere.  Mike is a fellow blog evangelist and blog consultant, and I try to get to his blog every day to get his latest bits of blogging wisdom.  It’s 11:55 p.m. my time, and I have finally made it to the last of my RSS feeds for the day. Mike has inspired a blog post that if I don’t stop and write now, it will somehow get filed away in a dark corner of my publisher where great blog posts or article ideas go to die.  This is not a post I want to be filed under "someday when I have time." 

Mike makes a crucial point that all businesses should take into consideration when making a blogging commitment:

Having Car Insurance doesn’t make you a better driver. Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean you’re all of a sudden better at marketing or that you’ll get more customers. 

I like the Gumpism of insurance not making a person a better driver.  The one I use is something along the lines of giving a man a rope doesn’t make him a cowboy.  The real purpose of the statement, and the point I hope to make, is that I have had many business owners that have seen my view of blogs and their purpose and value, and they sign off on a project that looks like a good investment and a good use of their resources.  Those businesses have made the leap and started down the path to successful blogging. Along that path they have somehow lost focus and the blog dies a slow and painful death, leaving behind great potential and superb content that is stored in the archives of a lost and pointless marketing strategy.  Blogging takes commitment and work.  For the business owner looking for the quick turnaround on their investment, blogging may be a disappointment in the early months of its infancy. 

Some businesses forget that blogging is not a short term solution, nor is it a magical tool that will somehow make inferior products better or poor service competitive.  I have used similar Gumpisms to describe my view of blogs after they have been brought into the world:

"A Blog is like a shoe box on the shelf in the closet–whatever you put into that box is what you will later take out of it"

or my often used:

"A Blog is like a garden you need good soil, proper planting, good watering and a little weeding for a bountiful harvest."

I’m beginning to fell like I’m channeling Forrest Gump!  My point is merely to give blogging a chance before it becomes just another one of the marketing schemes that were tried and failed. 

Tags: Mike Sansone, Blog Business Summit, blog evangelist, blog consulting, RSS, business blogging, business blogging

Powered by Qumana