All right, all right, it’s just an expression. I’ve only gone fishing twice in my life and I am not going to go ice fishing in New Jersey while I am away. I am taking time off for the rest of this year, returning on January 2 with my monthly newsletter. Whenever I take an extended time away from blogging, it always makes me think about how far blogging has come, and how far my blogging has come.
I started by writing an e-mail newsletter in February of 2005 and started blogging very sporadically a month later. This post, it turns out, is my 400th. I began blogging every workday this February (where “workday” is every day I work). My blog was named in Lee Odden’s Big List and has broken the top 100 in Social Rank a couple of times recently. Maybe it will be added to the Ad Age 150 list soon.
I think that blogging regularly doesn’t necessarily make you an expert on blogging, but I tried to make up for that gap by speaking with a lot of bloggers in the research for my latest book. I focused on both corporate bloggers and bloggers who cover those companies.
I learned a lot. What has been most striking to me is how blogging can sometimes make the world a better place. Blogs serve the same purpose that the news media has always served, as a force that makes bad behavior less acceptable. The companies that “get it” know that everything they do is public these days—someone will blog about it—so they need to be on their best behavior not to sully their precious brand images.
Maybe it’s not as good as if people did the right thing for its own sake, but it’s not bad.
For those of you taking some time off at the end of the year, I hope you come back recharged in January. I know I will.
