5 Reasons to pick up blogging

After a two-and-a-half-year absence, blogging is back in my life. Why now? Five very different things have conspired to my re-entry in the blogosphere. One is personal. The other four are incredibly relevant to every marketer.

1. Popular demand. Lots of people over the past years told me it was a pity I'd stopped posting. Apart from the flattering effect (which wears off pretty quickly) it built up to an increasing feeling of guilt. Contrarily to feeling flattered, guilt lingers. And it builds up over time. All it then needs is some help, which came from technology.

2. Phone cameras. Pictures help incredibly when you want to get a point across. Speaking for myself, the reverse is even true: one feels compelled to make a point when one sees the picture that goes with it. So always having a camera in your pocket has an enormous impact your ability to shape thoughts and share them with the world. Add to that the fact that a few phone makers were quick to recognize this and turned their horrible crapcams into fully-blown, usable cameras. Thank you, Nokia.

3. Online social networks. It's great to be able to stay connected and communicate with many friends and business contacts, bridging enormous distances and gaps in time. But while doing that I feel an increasing need to have an 'anchor presence' on the Web as well. A place where you put your own original content, a place where you can express ideas and thougts that are larger than bite-size. A profile page is not enough. A blog gives you all the room in the world.

44. Twitter. So now we've covered three basic human needs: a social network, the ability to communicate, and a place you can call your mental home. Anything missing? Yes, opportunity. Enter Twitter. Twitter fills the little gaps in between. What's more important, it does to blogging what the phone camera did to photography. It may not be an ideal tool but it's simple and lightweight, and you can afford to always have it on you and use it on the go. But a person cannot live by bite sized thoughts and visuals only. (At least I can't - I'm not speaking for the average politician of course.) So for me, tweeting and blogging are inseparable - one cannot live long without the other.

5. The iPhone. Or in my case, the iPod Touch. Hat off to Apple, who came up not just with a brilliant little gadget, but withba while ecosystem that put them at the nexus of all mobile developments. It's not just that we now have an elegant mobile device with a decent operating system, allowing us to do just about everything that you previously needed a laptop for. Nokia did that already, except that their OS is deeply inferior. But on top of that Apple managed to create an exosphere of developers who continuously come up with brilliant little apps for every possible need. Want to tweet? Dozens of apps are available. Want to publish to your blog? Pick and choose. Not to mention everything else under the Sun, but that's another day and another blog post. My only nags are that Apple still need to work a bit on the phone, and are still in the crapcam phase. Which is why I now carry two devices around.

So there you are. I know this is a bit if a risk. Having said what I just committed to posterity means that I now have no excuse not to blog. So be it. Meanwhile, see you on Twitter!

-- Post From My iPod