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I n early 2005, a business friend asked me, “How could you not have a blog? It’s such a great marketing tool.” I remembered a previous employer who had a poster that said, “Stronger than all the establishments of man is an idea whose time has come.” To blog or not to blog... Since starting his blog 10 years ago, an AEC marketing expert has found opportunities and inspiration through the platform
I decided that creating my own blog was just such an idea. MY STATISTICS. I started builtenvironment.blogs.com May 7, 2005. Later this week, I will publish post No. 200 in a series that now averages more than 500 words per post. So far, those 199 posts have resulted in more than 150 comments – about a third of them came through the blog; the rest came to me by email. Some of these comments resulted in additional blogs. More than a year ago, I started emailing a notice every month to the more than 900 AEC and related contacts in my address book. Each notice provides a quick message and links to the previous month’s posts, along with an “opt-out” statement. To date, fewer than 10 people have opted out of these notices. And, because people have shared these notices with others, several new people have liked my blog enough to request that they be added to the notification list. MY PHILOSOPHY. When I created the blog, my de- scription stated, “A visible expert shares random thoughts about marketing professional services
for the ‘built environment.’” The blog is still my random thoughts – any subject related to the marketing of professional AEC, environmental, and related services is fair game. Subjects are suggested to me by business friends and taken from what I read in Zweig publications, on LinkedIn, and in various SMPS and other publications. Occasionally, I revisit a subject – sometimes because I have changed my opinion, other times because I have learned things I didn’t know then. “The blog affords me the ongoing opportunity for one of my greatest professional joys – the sharing of what I have learned in my three decades as an AEC industry marketer.” In the end, it’s all about sharing information, experience, and expertise. MY PROCESS. I keep a running list of possible topics for blogs and full-length articles. When I think of something – or read something – that strikes my
Bernie Siben
See BERNIE SIBEN, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER DECEMBER 14, 2015, ISSUE 1131
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