The ROI for Blogging

Whenever I get into the topic of blogging with friends or colleagues one of the standard questions I get asked is "What's the Return on Investment?". I usually mention the significant contribution Robert Scoble has made to the way that Microsoft is perceived by important influencers. I talk about Hugh MacLeod, English Cut and Stormhoek as examples of the positive impact of blogging. I talk about Kryptonite and how the global conversation can negatively impact.

I can almost hear the unspoken question that plays in their heads as my friends and colleagues say to themselves "Ok I understand all that, but it doesn't scale to my little world / my little company / my little problem / my little issue".

So here (courtesy of Hugh) is a real world example of (1) how blogging scales (2) why blogging is so damn important. Read the post, and then, and this is important, read the comments. Look at that for a conversation. You can almost feel the wow response from the customer end. You can almost hear the customer's thoughts: "they care about me and my problem", "they care enough to come and talk to me" and "if they sort this out they've got me for life". I'm projecting a little but I'm pretty sure I'm not majorly wide of the mark.

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