“I went online and found your blog and your videos,” he said. This was a lawyer I’d recently met, and before our lunch he’d done some Googling. “If you ask me, you give too much away.” I asked him what he meant by that. He felt that I should stop putting out free content—especially these weekly blogs. "You're giving away valuable information. People should be paying for that."
What he didn’t understand was that my blog readers pay me in a currency that is far more precious than money. They pay me in time.
You’re reading this. That’s valuable to me. It’s a minute or two of your undivided attention that I would not otherwise have had. And hopefully, by the end of the blog, I’ve earned just a little more of your goodwill. Yes, on occasion a blog reader has responded to one of my posts with a request for my services, but that’s not the main reason I do this.
I do this because the blog is the smartest way I know to provide value to all of the people in my network.
We all have more relationships in our databases than we can manage. Even if we fill our calendars with business lunches, we still won’t be able to stay on everyone’s radar as frequently as we’d like to. And social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn don’t typically lend themselves to meaningful relationship-building.
But blogging is another matter. When you blog, you let someone into your thoughts for a minute or two. It’s an oddly intimate experience. And hopefully, if the blog has something of value to offer, your readers will feel that they know you, like you, and trust you a little more than they did before they started reading.
So, if you’ve been procrastinating the launch of your own blog, consider that it’s one of the most efficient ways you can build upon your many relationships. And if you’re daunted by the commitment of writing your own blog, be a critic to someone else’s. Write a sentence or two about why you like their blog and forward that to your database. Either way, you’re reconnecting regularly with your relationships, sharing your thoughts, and providing value.
Now it's your turn to provide value. Leave a comment below. What do you think about this week's post?
