Hugh MacLeod, author of the gapingvoid blog/comics today posted an "Important Announcement" in which he comments on how his consulting business has been both the beneficiary of his microbranding/blogging efforts and has taken his focus away from microbranding/blogging.

I too have been having the same scenario play out regarding my blogging and podcasting efforts as I've recently gone "dark" for a few months working on  Microsoft Software-plus-Services Blueprints.  As Hugh opines, it's recently been on my mind that it was time to re-think the value of the seemingly "frivolous" blogging/podcasting hours I've been slacking up on.

There are many Michael Lehmans in the world.  For example, the CFO of Sun Microsystems, a famous film director (he directed Heathers, 40 Days and 40 Nights, The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Hudson Hawk, Meet the Applegates and also Airheads.) as well as many other interesting Michael Lehmans who are doctors, and physicists. 

However, if you search for "Michael Lehman" on www.live.com, www.google.com or even on the meta search engines like www.metacrawler.com or www.dogpile.com my podcasting and blogging sites are always at the top.  Even my twitter site and my facebook site show up not too far down the list in some of the searches!

I even have the job I'm doing at Microsoft in significant part because I started blogging and podcasting 3 years ago.

So, it seems that it is a good idea to put more regular effort into bloging and podcasting that I've been doing given how the value of my "microbrand" has played out in real life.

So, having said all that, I decided I'd actually write a blog entry *before* I added a thank you comment to Hugh's blog and... this is it.

More soon!