Standing Partnership conducts hands-on blogging and social media training for our clients that are interested in leveraging social media tools, but aren't quite sure where to start. In the training, we devote a fair amount of time to answering the No. 1 question asked: "Where do I find the time to do all of this?"
I know where they are coming from. I post on this blog, have a personal blog, Tweet and am fairly active on Facebook and LinkedIn. Finding the time really is a challenge. But a piece I heard on NPR this morning racked me with guilt. It told the story of Yoani Sanchez, who writes the blog Generation Y and teaches students how to use WordPress, Wikipedia and other digital tools ... and she does all of this from Cuba, where the government views social media suspiciously. She says she's not allowed to have an Internet connection so she e-mails her posts from tourist hotels to friends abroad who run the blog for her.
- I not only felt guilty about complaining, but also decided there were two lessons that many of us could learn from Sanchez:
- Challenges ... schmallenges! If Sanchez can figure out how to blog given the obstacles she faces, I'd say we all should be able to.
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- Sanchez isn't tackling her blogging challenges alone and you don't have to either. Like Sanchez, consider building a blogging support system. A few of the tips we share in our blogger training include:
- Build a collaborative blog, like Where Do You Stand?
- Leverage content already being generated for newsletters and e-mails.
- Hire a researcher who can monitor digital and traditional media for blog fodder.
- Phone posts to an assistant to transcribe or e-mail them to someone to format.
- Find an impartial reviewer. Posts don't need to be essays or dissertations. A skilled reviewer can help you cut or even find ways to parse the content into several smaller posts, which can save time.
