Our blog has a business purpose, of course. Beyond that, it has also provided me with personal benefits. I might be able to list a dozen things I have learned, but here are a few:

I miss writing
My degree is in journalism, I started out working for a newspaper and evolved into speech writer, ad writer, just-about-anything writer. I recently remembered a colleague telling me that the problem with being an owner is that you end up managing instead of doing the work that attracted you in the first place. So true. The blog gives me a little bit back.

Doing this is a lot of work
I rarely have time to blog during the day, so I usually end up tapping out posts at night or on weekends. I don’t always feel like doing that. I don’t always have something to say. Despite that our self-imposed deadlines force me to dig deep and think hard. This is a good thing.

Writing about it reminds me of our mission
Our list of category labels is short by design. We want to write about certain things and to share what we might have seen or learned regarding specific topics. This forces us to talk about reputation management or crisis communications or corporate social responsibility. No, we would not otherwise forget about what we do for a living. The blog forces us to revisit the basics versus straying too far from task.

Our goal for the year ahead is to force ReputationForward and ourselves ahead. Clearly part of doing that will be, simply, to start doing it.