Blogging is an investment

When speaking to clients (and people in general) they sometimes don’t seem to grasp the importance of blogging regularly. I’m not referring to the sceptics here. I’m talking about people who want a blog, people who understand the relevance of blogs in today’s marketplace. They know they have to blog, but that they just “don’t have the time.” I’ve just read a short and direct article called Time is Something You Make, go and read it here. I totally agree with it. We make time for what we know we have to do. If you aren’t making time for blogging, you don’t really know you have to. You might say you know you have to – but you really don’t. It’s not coming from the core of you!

In a short space of time I’ve achieved a great success by way of this blog. I don’t make money directly on my blog – there are no ads or sponsored posts (and this might change over time…). At the moment my blog is being used as attraction tool. People are attracted to my business and to my skills because of what I write about. This is hugely significant because my personal profile is being built online, and months from now anyone will still be able to read my archives, and thereby track how I’ve grown as a person and how my business has grown. (Don’t you just love the archives?)

I think blogging is a great opportunity to express yourself. We all yearn for that at the most basic level. I’ve been doing this for years, in the form of a community network I started building in 2002 which I named Message Islam. It started out as a daily newsletter (from about 3 to over 1200 members currently worldwide!), and in May 2007 I started a blog at www.messageislam.co.za. All activities have been on hold for a few weeks, because I’m about to register a Non-Profit Organisation, and we’re going to start 9 major projects under the Message Islam banner, some of them international, and all of them web-driven. It’s quite exciting how a simple effort of sharing information (with no real long term vision) has now spiralled into something bigger than my wildest imagination!

I am of the view that blogs should be focused. I wouldn’t write about my cat (if I had one!) on my business blog. Similarly I won’t write about business on the Message Islam blog. But what about my personal stuff? For a few weeks now I’ve been battling with this in my mind. Well, I’ve finally registered www.jamaal.co.za – and this will be home of my personal blog. :) I’ve just sent in the application form, so the domain should be up by the end of today.

The power of blogging is the community that is built around your blog. You cannot build a community if you don’t communicate with them regularly. People want to be talked to, and they want to talk. Blogs facilitate both. You talk by way of your posts, and you allow others to talk back (interact) by way of comments.

This is not Internet stuff. This is human stuff!

Photo by Nicki-G on Flickr.com – under a Creative Commons licence.