The New Rules of Marketing and PR, 6th Edition

5Blogs: Tapping Millions of Evangelists to Tell Your Story

Blogging is my front door. Since 2004, my blog¹ has been where I post my ideas, both big and small. There's no doubt that my blog is the most important marketing and PR tool I have as a professional speaker, writer, and advisor to companies. Even after more than a decade and some 1,500 blog posts, I'm always surprised at how effectively this tool helps me accomplish my goals.

My blog allows me to push ideas into the marketplace as I think of them, generating instant feedback. Sure, many blog posts just sit there with little feedback, few comments, and no results. But I learn from these failures, too; when my audience doesn't get excited about something, it's probably either a dumb idea or poorly explained. On the other hand, some posts have had truly phenomenal results, quite literally changing my business in the process. I'll admit that my ravings about the importance of my blog may sound over the top. But the truth is that blogging really has changed my life.

The first time I shared my ideas about the new rules of PR, in a post on my blog that included a link to an e-book I had written, the reaction was dramatic and swift. In the first week, thousands of people viewed the post. To date, more than a million people have seen the ideas, hundreds of bloggers have linked to them, and thousands of people have commented on them, on my blog and others' blogs. That one blog post—and the resulting refinement of my ideas after ...