Business Blogs - To Blog or Not to Blog?

Do all entrepreneurs need business blogs?  Should the CEOs of the 30+ companies at VT KnowledgeWorks start blogs?

"Several years ago, the mantra was 'Every business needs a website.'  Today it's 'Every business needs a website with a blog.'"

That's a quote from a May 2008 article in Entrepreneur by John Jantsch.   

Even though I write blogs and value blogs, I hesitate to use words like "all" and "every" and "forever."  I begrudgingly appreciate my lessons from the school of hard knocks about the elusiveness of absolutes.  Often the answer to a question is, "It depends."

Here's one simple question that might help with deciding "To blog or not to blog?"

Do you write short e-mails or long e-mails?

If an absolute truth about e-mail exists, although I hestitate to make an absolute statement, one isn't better than the other.

But, if you write short e-mails, particularly if you use phrases or one-liners, your direct, to-the-point terseness may leave you very frustrated writing blog entries in which one tends to elaborate, albeit briefly, upon an idea. 

If you write long e-mails, particularly if you deliberate upon them, edit them, even spell check them, writing blog entries may be a natural extension of how you think and how you communicate your ideas to employees and customers.

Do all entrepreneurs need business blogs?  To blog or not to blog? 

It absolutely depends.

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Another point of view from The Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki:

"This is a directory of Fortune 500 companies that have business blogs, defined as: active public blogs by company employees about the company and/or its products.

According to our research, 61 (12.2%) of the Fortune 500 are blogging as of 5/13/08. The table below lists these companies, a sampling of their blogs, and links to Fortune 500 business blog reviews."