There is no need to preach to the choir, I know. But on a personal note, my article on how politics has been the rocket fuel behind the ascent of blogs this year, is now on the IABC’s Communication Bulletin, (IABC’s Online Newsletter for Communication Management.) You need to be a registered IABC member to access it here.

My favorite analogy is how many of us never quite knew what to make of the Web back in the eighties:

Imagine for a moment that you’re the corporate communication officer of a company in 1995, and at a meeting one day, you call people’s attention to something called the World Wide Web. Eyes glaze over. The numbers guy who has heard the phrase on CNN asks you to give him a cost-benefit assessment. The CEO says it is “very interesting.” A few account managers snicker in a corner about the wisdom of putting the company on a worldwide stage when it can only market its products locally. Would anyone care, they ask, if the company added this “HTTP whatever” to a business card?

To many communicators this scenario is familiar. We all battled with this “to web or not to web” question at some time. Now replace the reference to the web with the word “blog,” and the arguments (and the reactions across the room) are oddly similar.

If you get a chance to read the article, send me your comments to this address.

There is a follow up to this article in the next issue of CW Bulletin.