Patsi Concedes...a little...on social networking

Patsi writes in our recent issue of Savvy eBiz Tips:

Denise and I still haven't settled our debate whether social networking sites are worth spending time on yet, but I'll tell you one thing:

They are an excellent source of ideas and input on what your target audience is concerned about.

We wanted to know what challenges bloggers had with writing on their blogs. Denise asked the question on LinkedIn and the response was amazing and immediate.

Here are some of the challenges people posted, in order of descending frequency:

Finding time to post (this was mentioned in 70% of the responses...)
Getting readers to comment
Finding the "Wow" factor
Whether to share personal stories
How to repeat/re-purpose a topic
Wondering if the time involved is worth it in terms of results
Writing compelling titles
Finding relevant topics
Keeping it fun

Far and away, finding time to post was the recurring theme. I had to laugh, of course, and posted this on our Writing on the Web blog:

It seems these very busy professionals all have time to hang out on LinkedIn and answer our question, but they can't find time to write on their blogs...!

But this is an interesting use of a social site for business, and you can clearly see the value here in using LinkedIn, can't you? ...Yes, Denise, I can see this...!

Here's the post I wrote about why I think people really can't find the time to write on their business blogs:

http://www.coachezines.com/2008/04/blog-writing-ho.html

Is this a real challenge for you? I'll let you in on a secret...we did this research because we're developing a brand new class on business blog writing. It begins May 19. Stay tuned for details.