In a couple of weeks, I'm doing a panel at the PBS Development Conference on (what else) Web 2.0. One of the other panelists was going to be Jeremiah Owyang who could not participate due to a conflict with his new position at Forrester. He writes the Web Strategy blog that I follow closely because of his analytical writing about Web2.0. Even though it is more focused on the for-profit sector, I find what he writes about of value.
He wrote a thoughtful post called "The Difficult Balance of Writing a Career Blog." He defines it as:
The Career Blog is a unique property, it’s a mixture of work, personal, yet all passion. It travels from one job to the next, and can be one of the attractions for clients, employers, and partners. Balancing the needs of those many constituents is a challenge.
This is not unlike what I've described as a "personal professional development blog" when doing workshops for nonprofits. Take for example the blogs of these three nonprofit marketers. These are certainly career blogs.
- Katya Andresen, Non-Profit Marketing Blog
- Marc Sirkin, Nonprofit Marketing Blog
- Nancy Schwartz, Getting Attention
While catching up on Jeremiah Owyang's recent posts, questions that corporations ask:
Corporations
2005: What is Social Media?
2006: Why does it matter?
2007: What does it mean to my business?
2008: How do I do it right?
2009: How do I integrate across the Enterprise
This made me wonder. If I added another column that was labeled, "nonprofits" what would it look like? In thinking about the many web2.0 workshops I've done over the last six months, there are still people who raise their hands when I ask "Who is unsure what the term web2.0 means?" And, with some nonprofits in a perpetual state of anxiety, the "why does it matter" still needs to be addressed.
I'm so fortunate to have great community members like you, thank you!
Posted by: Jeremiah Owyang | September 08, 2007 at 07:50 PM
Beth,
Thanks for this VERY helpful post. I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to position and market my blog, i.e. how closely should it be tied to me and how closely should it be tied to NPower. This helped clarify things for me!
Jocelyn
Posted by: Jocelyn | September 10, 2007 at 04:41 AM