Why Blog?
By Jonathan Lehrer
Editor, MrCommunicator.com
My ego has been a bit underemployed lately. (By “lately,” I mean since I was the P.A. announcer at Niles North High School in Skokie in 1971.) So today–Feb. 1, 2011–I am giving my ego a birthday present: A blog, with the ego-feeding title of “MrCommunicator.”
(Please don’t tell my ego that about 10 billion people have treaded this ground before me.)
From left: Joe Weber, Chris Ruys, Wally Podrazik, Jill Stewart, Scott Meis
So for my first official post, I reached out to journalism profs, writers and professional communicators to muse about why people bang away at the keyboard when they could be enjoying Craig Ferguson. Or, better, sleeping.
- Wally Podrazik says people blog because they have to.
- Jill Stewart says she blogs because she can.
- Joe Weber sees blogging as a way of living out a fantasy.
- Chris Ruys uses blogs to promote her business.
- And Scott Meis says a blog is a form of “personal brand positioning.”
Chris Ruys, owner of Chris Ruys Communications, Inc., a self-described child of the ‘60s, points out that most of what she’s learned is “out the window” in these days of social media.
Chris blogs “to share the new rules of marketing, PR and communications with my subscribers, friends, followers and connections.” While she runs her boutique PR firm–which she aims to promote in via the blogosphere–Chris still finds time to write for two blogs: “Getting Social” (about social media tools) and her newest online endeavor, chrisruys1on1, a subscriber-based blog with tips, tactics and advice on social media, public relations and communications.
What Chris is doing is “personal brand positioning,” in the view of Scott Meis, a Digital Group Manager on Weber Shandwick’s Social Impact team.