It came as a pleasant surprise to be invited a couple of weeks ago to participate in a panel discussion at the Healthcare Blogging Summit portion of Consumer Health World Conference at the end of April 2007.

Our panel topic is: "Creating a Presence - Plan and Develop Your Blog Strategy & Tactics on Establishing Your Social Media Presence" and we'll be focusing on the role that blogging is playing in business development and marketing.

I've only been blogging for six months, so I hardly qualify as a major expert in this area, but I do know that I can comment on the impact of blogging on my business.

For me, blogging has meant:

• The ability to have a conversation. Although my readers do not comment much on my blogs, seldom a week goes by without emails from readers, providing feedback, insights and other resources.
  
  
• The ability to express myself. I have long fancied the idea of becoming a novelist, without any of the discipline or inspiration needed to succeed in getting published. Well, I have discovered that blogging comes a close second - I LOVE writing the blog posts.
  
  
• The ability to organize my thoughts. Closely related to the second point above is the idea that my thoughts and musings are all organized into categories, with dates and times, so that IF I ever get around to writing a book on physician entrepreneurship, the task will be much less onerous. Less writing, more cutting and pasting; less research, more searching my blog posts.
  
  
• The ability to develop a network. Part of my excitement at attending and participating in the conference is the potential that exists to meet and talk to many of my fellow bloggers, whom I have been admiring from a distance. Many of us are active bloggers at Trusted.MD, a network of healthcare bloggers run by the indomitable and energetic Dmitriy Kruglyak.
  
  In addition, I consider my "correspondence regulars" to be a part of my network, as is that group of non-healthcare bloggers whose inspiring posts I read daily. People like Pam Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation, Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users, Matthew Stibbe of Bad Language, Kristi T of Kristi T's Home Business Blog, Jeff Cornwall of The Entrepreneurial Mind, Ann Michael of Manage to Change and Leon Ho of LifeHack (to name just a few).
  
  
• The ability to be perceived as an expert. For those of us for whom this is an important part of our business strategy, this is a biggie. A study I heard about recently (can't find it on the Web at present - anyone know where I can find it?) revealed that about 79% of journalists and writers said that they turned first to the blogosphere to see who was an expert on a topic, and thus worthy of an interview.
  It was through my new blog that I was approached by a representative for Oakstone Medical Publishing late last year to be the guest faculty speaker for their audioconference for physicians on “Become a Physician Entrepreneur: Use Your Medical Know-How and Credibility to Launch a Lucrative Business”.
  
  
• The ability to brand myself. It is my fondest hope that, as I continue to develop my blogging writing "voice" that my readers will begin to sense who I am and what I stand for. In that way, those clients who I am meant to work with and serve will be drawn to The Entrepreneurial MD brand.
  
  
• And last but by no means least, the sudden appearance of my website and blog on Google's page number one. I'd planned my whole website and blog promotional strategy around the common wisdom that regular writing on your topic of expertise and incorporating keywords that your readers might use to find you, was the way to rise to the top of the search engines. So I was puzzled when I didn't see my name, or a Google Page rank, despite anxious scrutiny day after day.
  Well, last week, it happened! I guess I had been stuck in the notorious "Google sandbox" for almost 5 months, and was suddenly let out. I confess, it is very satisfying to see my hard work pay off, and have my site show up on page 1 for at least five of my keywords or phrases.

So, if you are wondering whether a blog might be good for your business, these are some of my observations. I look forward to hearing from my co-panelists, Dale Hunscher of Business Blogging for Healthcare Professionals and Mike Smith of Mike Smith Business Development, and sharing with you what more I discover.