Business and Blogging

Blog Posts Don’t Always Have to Come to a Conclusion

by Des Walsh on February 14th, 2007

It seems to me that in business, as in life generally, when we raise a subject there is often an expectation that we have a complete statement in mind, or our own answer to a problem we raise. And if that’s so, it probably inhibits a lot of thoughtful people from airing their surmises and their questions. Which for me makes conversation and human interaction the poorer.

When we were in school (at least, when I was in school, it may be better now), things were explained, we learned the answers to questions and we served up those answers and that’s how we got good grades. But progress doesn’t come about that way.

Progress comes from someone focusing on and airing a problem and then someone, the same person or perhaps another, coming up with a solution. If questions are not to be raised till answers are ready, a lot of creativity will never see the light of day.

One of the great things about blogs is that you don’t always have to have the answer to questions you raise. And as your readership grows you have a widening group of people who can be invited to complement your questions with some possibly useful answers.

For example, today on my Thinking Home Business blog I’ve posted about why solo, home-based professionals don’t delegate - see Why Home Based Professionals Don’t Delegate. The short answer would be - d’oh, because they’re solo. The longer answer recognizes the existence of virtual assistants and other services which the home based businessperson could outsource to (and in that sense “delegate”).

My instinct, once I’d framed the question and given some examples and a link to a colleague’s post which had inspired me to write on the subject, was to go on and try to provide some answers.

But I stopped. And invited comments.

When, as many blogging consultants do, we talk about blogging as “conversation”, maybe we mean in part that a blog can be an extension of our conversation with ourselves, with the addition of opening that conversation to others, via the comments function. And if you are a reasonably curious person you will surely often have more questions than you have answers.

In short, a blog post does not need to be a rounded essay, with a clear conclusion drawing all the threads neatly together. It can be simply the statement of an issue or a question, preferably with some background, or examples, and I find such posts more interesting and thought-provoking if they link to other blogs where that issue is being discussed.

And I encourage clients to end their blog posts with a question, or an invitation to comment, as long as that flows fairly naturally. In that spirit, I would be interested to read comments or further questions on the subject. And disagreement with the premise is of course fine.

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