Blog your business & your competition.

Business blogging? Here's my 2 cents.

I've been blogging for a while.

I'm sure I started out the way most bloggers do. I heard about blogging. Clicked a few links. Opened a free account at Blogger which I posted 2-3 sentences and then abandoned. Read a few more blogs. And then I started a blog at a paid service.

The paid part and the sense of familiarity that came with time allowed me to actually start writing.  (I'll leave the decision as to whether it's worth reading to you.) The tipping point came when I realized that I didn't have to write a book, that I was an authority on a number of things that others wanted to know, and that I enjoyed sharing that information and felt rewarded when people would read my stuff. It's not a thesis. It's a blog.

Now I have a total of three blogs, each with a specific focus.

The first blog I posted to was Medical Spas Online. MSO is a community blog that I write for occasionally  focused on non-surgcial cosmetic medicine targeted directly at physicians in that space. It's attracted a loyal redership of around 2000 docs.

Interaction in that space and a growing familiarity with blogging in general has built a sense of 'blog trust' in me. 

So I started two other blogs. (I'm also trying to talk my daughter into starting a blog on 'Three Day Eventing for Young Riders'.)

I've launched an experimental blog for my medical business. The Surface Medical Spas Blog is designed to be an interface between Surface and our patients. Our physicians and staff will post information on our treatments and technology, and answer questions in a format that is available to our existing  and potential patients. I'm excited by this since I haven't seen this kind of format used by any business in the way we're using it.

Then there's this blog of course. Startup venture, startup blog. 

A growing number of great blogs cover much of what I'll be blogging about here. Why would the bloggosphere be in need of anything I might ad? Who knows. I'm hoping to be able to accomplish a number of things. Focus my thoughts and strategy by forcing myself to commit my thoughts to paper (kind of). Interacting with other entrepreneurs. Attracting talent. Instigating a corporate culture. Buiding trust in our small business clints, and potential business partners.

Now before I get too excited, Chris Anderson has some feeling on business blogs; "the natural voice of the boss is fundamentally incompatible with the voice of the blogger, at least as regards their own company affairs."

 But wait, there's still hope. Chris goes on to say "The best business blogs come from the employees, not the bosses. They have more time, and are less prone to marketing gobbledygook and gnomic platitudes. And those kind of blogs are on the rise, not the decline."

In reading that, it seems like my wish list may be a tall order. We'll see what we can do.