Swiss Army Knife - Blogging AnalogyRecently, Liz Strauss set out a challenge to those of us who blog - write a blog post using a metaphor to describe blogging to help introduce or explain what blogging is to others.

In taking up this challenge, I decided to do so looking at business blogs which is where both my interest and my professional focus lies. From this perspective, I would liken a business blog to a Swiss Army Knife (SAK).

Like the Swiss Army Knife, I consider a Business Blog to be a tool which has 101 possible uses. All self contained, it gives the owner a range of options as to how to use it which will vary according to the situation that they find themselves in at the time. Often, the trouble is understanding all of the possible uses and then deciding which is the most appropriate for a given situation.

It is something which is easy to use at a basic level but if you want to use it properly then it demands time and attention. When someone has taken the trouble to explore and understand the tool, has discovered how best to use it and has learned from the experience of others, then the results can be excellent. However, in the wrong hands, it could be considered as a dangerous tool to “play about” with.

But remember, while it is a tool which can do all of these things, it cannot do them all at once. If you try to pull all of the tools out of the knife at the same time, then the result will be chaos and you won’t be able to use any of them properly. Likewise, an individual blog should not try to be all things to all people – it is at its best when it has focus and is used for a specific purpose.

And how do I feel about it? Well, like the SAK, whatever it does and whatever I use it for, it remains personal to me - I feel a sense of pride in owning it, using it and maintaining it. I make sure that it is fit for purpose so that it works for me in the way that I want it to and the way that it was designed to. It works for me and it’s personal to me at the same time, and I hope that that comes through in the way that I use it.

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