I've been consulting full time on social media for almost three years now. One of the most common reasons people don't get started with something like blogging is because they think it's going to take too much time. My response is almost always something like, "Yes, it will, but do it anyway." Now fast forward to the present day. I'm a social media marketing guy and I'm finding it hard to to find time to do the very stuff I tell my clients to do. I look back at my level of social media engagement over the last month or two and it's been down a bit. I'm concerned about the trend I see emerging from my own activity (or lack thereof). The good news is that I've been busier than ever. The bad news is that I've been busier than ever.
The dark side to being busy with good things is that they slowly draw you away from the stuff that got you busy in the first place. I already see myself fighting the urge to say, "Everything's going pretty well, it's not a big deal if I push this post off another few days."
Besides being a great marketing, branding, and engagement tool, blogs also force commitment in order to remain truly valuable. Commitment means time, and that's the first thing that goes when you get busy.
If I'm honest with myself, I see that I have more sympathy for the people who say they can't blog because they're too busy. Having been busier than ever over the last few months has shown me what that looks like. At the same time, I want to encourage the busy people to keep blogging if they ever did or start doing it for the first time.
People who are busy with the right things are the people who need to be blogging the most. We need to be blogging to stop and think for a little bit. We need to be blogging to stay fresh. We need to be blogging to stay sharp. We need to be blogging because there's something we can say that will both help someone out and help us in return.
I'm writing this post as an official re-commitment to blogging despite being busy with good things and recognizing how easy it would be to push it off another day. Time to get back to the basics. Anyone else with me?