Ray Ozzie Disappears, Motivations For Blogging

I was adding some extra content to my growing post on the history of corporate blogging and noticed that Ray Ozzie's blog appears to have disappeared.

If that's the case, it is a sad loss for the history of the blogging and corporate blogging. Ozzie's Groove Networks was an early pioneer in the field of business blogging, and it would be great to make sure we continue to have access to that content.

Global PR Week

Last year I was reviewing the participants in the Global PR blog week from 2004, and discovered that most of the original participants are still writing their blogs, I also made a list of people from the event on Twitter, you can follow my Twitter list of participants from the first PR Blog Week.

Paull Young recently returned to blogging, and with all of the wringing of hands about Facebook, I’m reminded of my long time theory that everyone will be eventually running their own website, or blog.

Here’s why, if you start using social media, and participating online, you eventually get to the point where you realize that developing content for a social network means you are giving your content to the network rather than developing it for you.

I was starting to think this idea was wrong, over 500 million people on Facebook is probably enough to convince anyone that the convenience of having a social network where you can easily connect with other friends and colleagues, but maybe I should return to the idea…then I think of Twitter and marvel at the simple design, and how the company has managed to keep implied brand promises with users so far.

What's Your Blogging Motivation?

Anyway, I’ve been wondering why people blog, why they stop, and what keeps a blogger motivated? I’m curious because I’m interested how large companies can use blogging, and online writing to connect with their audiences. Connection and conversation means we have to have someone doing the connecting, so understanding the motivations for blogging are important.

The cluetrain manifesto long ago suggested every employee wants to chat with customers and will use online tools to converse. I’m never been entirely supportive of this idea, especially as I discovered so few employees were successful, active bloggers.

Now Twitter or Facebook may be more of the tool for this type of organic conversation between employee and customer, the effort required to tweet or use Facebook is a lot less than a blog.

However, if you are running a company you really want some of your content on your own site, for search purposes alone, and that probably means building a blog, or online website with regular updates to content. You will need to generate more content than Twitter, long form articles are what are needed. The effort to create the volume of content needed is great, so a person's motivations for blogging have to be good.

I’d like to ask the PR Blog Week Alumni from 2004 why they still blog, and what keeps them motivated? These old timers in blogging have been around a long time. Is blogs a thing of the past, or are we seeing a return to the glory days?

PR Blog Week Alumni

Constantin Basturea Elizabeth Albrycht  Richard Bailey  Chris Bechtel Anita Campbell Trevor Cook Don Crowther Kevin Dugan Sally Falkow, Matias Fernandez Dutto, Angelo Fernando, Dan Forbush, Bernard Goldbach Robb Hecht Wayne Hurlbert Jim Horton Mike Manuel Alice Marshall Ryan May World of Spin John Mudd Tom Murphy B.L. Ochman Anthony V Parcero,Jeremy Pepper Evelyn Rodriguez Todd Sattersten (A Penny For... and 800-CEO-READ Blog) Trudy Schuett Roland Tanglao Octavio Rojas Steve Rubel (Micro Persuasion) Jeremy Wright  Philip Young   Hans Kullin Colin McKay