OK. It's past bedtime so I'm going to make this brief. I just recently subscribed to Tom Peter's blog - his RSS feed. I got off on his 18th post in a series called 100 Ways to Succeed. This one was called Lunch Management. It's good, read it. But that's not my point.
I've been trying to convince my favorite marketing guru, Robert Middleton, to start blogging. He's had a runaway success with his excellent free eZine, More Clients, which has a subscriber base of something like 30,000. So far, I haven't had much luck in convincing Robert, but it just struck me what he's missing by not blogging.
There's something about blogging - could it be Google-juice that is missing from eZines? They are private. Yes, they can be passed on from friend to friend but they generally aren't posted.
When you blog, you are discoverable. Now, perhaps Robert has good Google-juice. He says that he picked out certain keywords and he's achieved a high google-rating with those words.
And Robert has a Forum that's apparently really good - I haven't checked it out but I'm sure it is. So he has a way to get feedback from his subscribers. I'm sure he gets great feedback and ideas from it.
But, I say that a blog could raise Robert's stature in the world. I was thinking - what if Tom Peters linked to his blog - if he had a blog? What would that do?
Blogging makes you accessible. People can subscribe (unless you set up walls around your blog). People can read you when they feel like it - now and then or regularly. They can comment (if you let them). Tom has his comments turned on.
Perhaps there's some thinking to do to figure out where do eZines fit and where does a blog fit. Do you need to choose between the two? I hope not.