Launching a blog is like growing tomatoes. At the earliest stage it's anyones guess as to what might grow. And, even if you get a plant out of the ground there is no guarantee it will bear fruit...
Hugh gets at this when speaking to our Digital Nomads blog. We've got it off the ground and we're watching it grow. Conversations are blossoming. Hopefully it will bear fruit in terms of ideas and information that benefit digital nomads. But who knows. He says it well:
The blog is still in its early days. I can see it still struggling, like all new blogs do, to "find its voice" [Hey, if a blog can find its voice in under twelve months, I consider that good going]. Of course, it's going to have the same problem that ALL corporate blogs do i.e the problem of balancing BOTH the needs of the perennially kvetchy, perennially skeptical, perennially dissatisfied blog-reading public, and the commercial interests of the company. Harder than it looks. The fact that they are giving it a go AT ALL I find encouraging.
And herein lays the rub for so many of us in the communications profession. For the decades we have been doing what we do we've been trained, brainwashed and beaten into delivering perfection. Perfect press releases. Perfect press conferences. Perfect press clippings.
Suddenly we're confronted by a medium that is inherently imperfect. We don't control the conversation. Topics come and go. You allow others to publish where once you built walls. And, to work, we need to work quick which means publishing, warts and all... And that is what makes it exciting...
I've been part of the creation of more blogs than I care to remember. Some worked. Some didn't. The main learning along the way is that success correlates closely with the willingness of the communicators to take risk and embrace the spirit of the medium. And that means letting go.