The basis for my item here this morning is this Sarah E. Needleman article entitled "Blog It and They May Come," appearing yesterday in The Wall Street Journal Online. Basically it validates that small businesses get the big idea behind blogging.

In my 30 years in public relations and marketing communications, chiefly with agencies, I've worked with hundreds of small and medium sized businesses as well as large ones. Given a choice, I always preferred the small companies and here's why: usually the CEO knew the business cold; the relatively small and tight knit executive management team could make a decision in something less than forever; most people in the best small companies are passionate about what they do and love to talk about it. They are on a mission to make you interested in what they do and why.

Conversely, big corporate CEOs and executive management teams are often either untouchable or so layered up they are out of touch. Many are professional managers with no historic ties to a company's founding ideas or passions. They get passionate instead about rather antiseptic things like balance sheets and income statements. I'm not saying this is bad or that there aren't exceptions. There are: Welch, Grove, Gates, Jobs perhaps, just to name a few. But in general, this isn't a group that loves to blab and gush. Take for example the fella who runs IBM these days. Do you know his name? Do you know what he stands for? Maybe if you're an investor you know all this, but about 75 years ago or so everyone knew the name Tom Watson and what he stood for, but I digress…

Please, if you have the time, take a minute to at least scan Ms. Needleman's article. See how passionate small business people not only get the big idea, but are very good at it because they are not afraid, they have much to say, they love what they do, and they are not kept in check by a big, traditional communicatons operation vetting every thing that is said and written.

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