At BZ, we love to learn.  Continually exploring the latest trends and best practices in strategic communications and marketing helps us better serve our clients by enhancing our expertise and broadening our knowledge.  It’s one of the reasons we love new media so much.  No longer must we wait for the latest edition of a trade magazine or an industry gathering to share ideas and learn what’s new (and working) in the field.  That knowledge is available 24 hours a day on the Web in free and diverse stores of knowledge, no longer limited by geography or other factors.

The Internet brings a wealth of shared knowledge and resources, not just for strategic communications and marketing professionals, but for all.  Everyone communicates in some way or another and, in 2010, “another” has become an increasingly broad category.  Whether you primarily communicate via traditional face-to-face meetings or through social networking, resources online can help you do it more effectively.

One of those resources is the very blog you’re reading now—a space we’ve set up for BZ’s experts to share our thoughts, ideas, and best practices with you—including particularly great stuff we find from other sources on the Web.  As a regular feature on this blog, “BZ Picks” will navigate the myriad of communications resources on the Internet today, filter them through the decades of real-world experience we have, and bring the most interesting and valuable items we find to your attention (with a few thoughts of our own, of course!)

It seems appropriate that our first pick for the BZ Blog be a piece by new media expert Chris Brogan on blogging itself.  Many companies, government agencies, small businesses, and even individuals are under increasing pressure to join the blogosphere, and many more have stuck a toe into the water only to beat a hasty retreat, leaving blogs in place that are stagnating: rarely updated or full of placeholder content that serves little purpose—an unfortunate situation on many levels.  Not only does something seemingly unfinished or uncommitted reflect poorly on the very thing it represents, but a genuinely valuable chance to communicate and market strategically is lost.

In his piece, “A Simple Blogging Formula,” Brogan, one of the industry’s most prolific and dependable bloggers, shares his process for producing a consistently informative and strategically effective blog.  Read it here and learn more about Chris Brogan here.

In all my years of blogging, I’ve put together what serves as a very simple formula for what I think about when I sit down to the keyboard to type. This might not serve everyone, but it might be a great start for you to consider when thinking about blogging.

– Chris Brogan, A Simple Blogging Formula