Blogging as one of my New Year's resolutions

The New Year has started! All the good New Year's resolutions are flying around. From losing weight to visiting family members. Everything that we already did in 2011, but then just a little bit better. 

My New Year's resolution is to blog more!

In the last couple of years I blogged a lot on my website and for one of my clients. In these small articles I have often emphasised on the importance of blogging. I still believe in this, even though it took me 2.5 months to write a new article. This also happened with the blog of one of mt clients. I did not write something for a long time and as a result of that my special spot with all my articles on their frontpage was gone. This is a normal development when you put this in to the perspective of networked working.

While working in networks, it is not recommended to be passive. The one who is not active in a network will lose his or her position within a network. In my case the frontpage of my client's website. This also counts for social networks like Twitter. When you only absorb information via Twitter instead of share yours with other, you will hardly become the centre of a network. You will probably be suited on the edges of networks. As a result, new information and knowledge will probably reach you not as fast as others who are more an integrated part of a network.

Is this my reason to have this good resolution about blogging? Yes! However, it is just one of the reasons. An other reason why I would like to write more was being written down by Euan Semple in his latest book 'Organizations don't tweet, People do: A Manager’s Guide to the Social Web'. Among other things he writes about the following: 

“Much has been made of the business benefits of “knowledge retention”. Organizations have instigated various practices to achieve this lofty aspiration, from exit interviews to “knowledge capture” exercises ... In contrast to all of these conventional methods, what if you were creating your legacy as you worked? If you run your project in a wiki, discuss what is working, or not, on a forum, or write your interpretation of what you are doing on a blog, then all of that contextual richness is captured. Not captured in the usual knowledge management sense as dry business stuff stored in a knowledge coffin, but lively first person narrative, revealed as it is being thought through and worked out. Blogging is very powerful in this context.”

Are you interested in reading more about why and how you should the social web? Buy the book and use it is a reference while experiencing the ins-and-outs of the social web.