This talk took place in 2008–almost ten years ago–but it remains 100% true. “Blogging” (at least by that name) may not be de rigueur anymore, but the value is still there. Especially when you define value like these two experts in their fields do:
Update: I transcribed it for you because I’m nice like that…
Seth Godin: How many of you have a blog? Alright. Blogging is free; it doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the meta-cognition of thinking about what you’re gonna say. How do you explain yourself, to the few employees, or your cat, or whoever’s going to look at it? How do you force yourself to describe in three paragraphs why you did something? How do you respond out loud? If you’re good at it, some people are going to read it. If you’re not good at it, and you stick with it, you’ll get good at it. But this has become much bigger than are you BoingBoing, or the Huffington Post. This has become such a micro-publishing platform that basically you’re doing it for yourself, to force yourself to become part of the conversation, even if it’s just that big. And that posture change changes an enormous amount.
Tom Peters: I will simply say…my first post was in August of 2004. No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging. It has changed my life, it has changed my perspective, it has changed my intellectual outlook, it’s changed my emotional outlook, parentheses, and it’s the best damn marketing tool by an order of magnitude I’ve ever had.
Seth Godin: And it’s free.
Tom Peters: And it’s free.
Seth Godin: So there you go.
So there you go!