The ROI of Blogging? Intangible

I celebrate two years of blogging this Sept 2007. It’s been a fast period of my life, that for sure. I first started blogging to understand the tools, share my ideas, so I could then deploy at my corporate job, boy, I didn’t realize the personal and professional benefits it would bring. (you hear me Jeff L.?)

The best things about blogging is that it’s an ‘open’ network. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace, anyone can leave a comment –even if you’re not registered. I know who my real friends are and I don’t need to add them to any list on my blog.

It’s been a great tool, I’ve met so many people, developed relationships (many who I have met in real life because of this) built a community, and communicated my ideas. Although just a number, I’ve reached the 1060 mark in less than 1.5 years on this domain, as you know, the previous blog was on blogspot, until I moved to Wordpress.

It’s not just been about me. This blog has brought my current and previous employers many business opportunities, come talk to me in person and I’ll explain more! I got my current and future job, mainly because of what I’ve accomplished on my blogging and what that’s lead to. Allen Stern said I was an A-Lister, I shot back, “No I’m not, I’m a successful B-Lister, and proud of it!”

I remember when I got my start blogging, it was at the Blog Business Summit in 2005 in SF. I had lunch with Rebecca Blood, one of the blogosphere’s A-listers, she schooled me good on what good blogging is, and even coaxed me away from using a ghost blogger for a corporate blog –I was too naive to know any better at the time. Rebecca wrote the Weblog Handbook, which I devoured quickly. She came to my work at HDS with her husband the famous Jesse James Garrett (yeah he named AJAX, and is an Adaptive Path Founder) and was very humble and shy to sign the book that influenced me. Thank you Rebecca for your early teachings.

How did things move so fast for me? I’m lucky, I was in the right area (silicon valley) at the right time, and blogged just about every day and reached out to others. A few months back I wrote why you should pay yourself first, and why one thing leads to another, I encourage you to follow these principles too.

My future colleague, luminary Charlene Li, has already proven the value of ROI, but for me, it’s not needed, I could do an ROI report, convert to time spent, opportunities gained, and business won, but I think I’d be missing some of the point. Why? I already see an ROI in blogging, I don’t need to measure, it’s brought me so many friends, so many contacts, it would be silly to measure.

So what’s next? lots of good things, stay tuned, I’m going to start a new chapter, and I want you to join me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Social Media, Social Media Measurement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.