The Never-ending Battle to Feed the Beast

“Let’s start a blog,” exclaimed my partner Anna one day last year.

“Great idea,” I said. “But I already do all the bookkeeping for the business, so the blog will be your baby, OK?”

“Word,” replied Anna, in a weak attempt to bring some urban grit to her vocabulary.

A few months later, Anna learned she’d be having a baby of her own. In August, she had that baby and began her well-earned maternity leave.

So now I’m feeling like the parent of a kid who begged for a dog and then got stuck with said dog when the kid left for college three years later. I didn’t really want this blog, but now I’m responsible for its care and well-being.

I’ve been pretty good about my blog duties. It’s largely out of pride. After all, there’s nothing worse than checking out a blog only to learn it was last updated during the first Bush administration. Seriously, at some point, you’re doing more harm than good by keeping a blog like that on life support.

True story: I recently visited the site of a prospective client. The News page had a total of five entries. The first four were posted in August 2002. The last one went up in February 2003. That’s almost SEVEN YEARS without an update, man! Time to take down that page.

Which brings me back to blogs. If you’re going to take that leap and start a corporate blog, make sure you have the resources to devote to the task. It has to be someone with the time and writing chops to produce good stuff on a frequent basis. Or, someone who can corral submissions from various contributors throughout the company (no easy task).

As for me, I’m aiming for one new post each week. That way, Lightning & the Lightning Bug can at least maintain respectability until its mom comes back in January.