Fancy a Quickie?
You know when you hear people bemoaning the fact that in order to post to your blog takes up time - valuable time - what is it us bloggers always respond with?
‘It only takes fifteen minutes a day to write a post - anybody can spare fifteen minutes.’
I even proclaimed words to that effect myself not so long ago. Granted, I was talking more about making sure you posted frequently than anything else, but I still mentioned the fifteen minute mantra.
Just recently this has been troubling me. Are your potential customers only worth fifteen minutes a day. Can you really write anything of any discernible value in fifteen minutes? Would you only give somebody fifteen minutes if they walked into your place of work?
I’ll accept that you might only be able to spare fifteen minutes on certain days, but only allocating fifteen minutes a day to your blog is total nonsense.
What about reading other blogs and commenting?
What about responding to comments on your own blog?
What about just keeping on top of things?
Blogging amounts to quite a bit more than simply writing the thing. Subsequently, blogging requires more than fifteen minutes a day.
It’s part of the whole blog evangelism hoopla that you only realise is cobblers once you’ve done it yourself for any period of time.
One of the keys to successful blogging is hard work - ball busting, back breaking (maybe not back breaking, but it can get a bit sore sitting at a computer all day) hard work.
I sat in on a business blogging seminar in Cleveland not so long ago and you should have heard the groan resonate around the room when Eric Olsen said he spent 8-10 hours a day at it then Barbara Payne proclaim it required hard work.
Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s some kind of quick fix to all your business marketing woes - it’s not.
As Swiss Toni might say, ‘Running a blog is like making love to a beautiful woman.’
And I’m sure you wouldn’t woo her with a quick fifteen minute fumble. I’m also sure you wouldn’t allow somebody else to fumble on your behalf. 
Filed under: Business Blogging, Paul
Blogging is the hardest work I’ve ever done, and it’s destroying my physical health and turning me into a STEREOLAB music addict.
I’ve done roofing work, galvanizing work, house painting, restaurant waitering, picking up rocks in a hazardous waste dump pit prior to laying down the Super PVC layer to prevent ground water contamination, and lots of back breaking, literally, broken twice, work.
I’ve been a database marketing firm account rep, a magazine publisher copywriter, a promotions writer for a Wall Street firm (with an office near the bottom of Wall Street looking out on the East River), a freelance ad writer for a firm with an office in the World Trade Center (ground floor), an ad agency (Grey Advertising, NYC) senior direct marketing copywriter, and a copy director and PR writer for a pioneering direct marketing firm.
But blogging is the hardest, most frustrating, most mentally and spiritually challenging work of all.
You have to spend at least 12 hours a day visiting other blogs, leaving intelligent comments on them (and they almost never reciprocate, the bloogers), studying books by Christopher Locke, Seth Godin, John Hagel, Biz Stone, Rebecca Blood, Nick Usborne, Laura Ries, Al Ries, etc.), learning new complex tech (audio blogging, podcasting, RSS, video blogging, comment spam captchas and other prevention, computer security, HTML, web design, web usability, micro content writing, online community building, dynamic looping, on and on and on and on).
Oh by the way…if you’ve never been banned, kicked off a bulletin board, blog, web forum, discussion list, chat room, etc., then I doubt you have an original, powerful, honest, aggressive Voice.