You don’t need perfection to be a good blogger, but you do need passion

Earlier this year, I performed this social media strategy audit for a smaller company.  After presenting the results and my findings to the company, I was on a conference call with the owner and his son, who was the marketing manager, discussing what their next steps should be.  My findings, coupled with the company’s resources and what they wanted to accomplish via social media, suggested that they could probably benefit from launching a company blog.

But I wasn’t convinced that the company could handle running a blog.  In my previous talks with the marketing manager, I got the impression that they could only devote 1 person to the blog, and I didn’t feel that they really understood how much of a workload would be required.  I was recapping my findings with the owner and his son, and the owner remained silent while the son did all the talking.

After about 30 mins, I wasn’t at all convinced that the company was ready to commit to writing the blog, and was willing to put the time and effort into it.  And quite frankly, I didn’t think the company had the passion that would be required to maintain it.

I finally decided that it was time to cut to the chase, and see if they were serious or not.  So I told the son that I thought that a blog could work for his company, but that I didn’t believe they had the resources available to commit to the project long-term, and that I quite frankly didn’t think they could devote the time and energy necessary to sustain the blog.

The owner decided to speak up for the first time. “Look” he said in a slightly irritated tone, “I can DO this! I love this business and I know how to talk to my customers! I can do this, I want to do this!”