Does your business really need a blog? It is a fair question when you consider the following:
- Blogging takes time
- Blogging requires producing ideas regularly
- You need to identify who will blog and how often they will do it
- Blogging does have costs associated with it (time, maintenance of blog platform)
After all, you are already a busy business owner not with a lot of time on your hands, and the salary that you are paying your employee is dog eared for other more important activities, right?
Sure, take that approach if you want your business to be left in the dust.
Define blogging will ya?
Blogging in its most basic form is just posting information regularly on your website in a dedicated area, whatever you want to call it, updates, news, information, research. In fact, the idea of blogging stemmed from early Internet journaling.
Needless to say, it has evolved to be much more involved than its primitive form, but the basic idea of blogging hasn’t changed.
Purpose of blogging: Publish on a topic of interests and information that is readily available to the world by means of the Internet, whether it is ready directly on the website, or perhaps syndicated to another platform through an email newsletter, mobile device, or another website re-publishing it.
In essence, blogging is the means for you to put out whatever information you want about your product, service, and industry from your viewpoint to spread the buzz, interest, and garner interest about your brand.
In his book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR (which is a must read by the way for any owner, manager, or marketer), David Meerman Scott shows us the many reasons how regular content published on a website should speak to your target audience and what the pay off is.
This innovative book talks about the real-life change, not trends, that the world of business has undertaken and how prospects and customers are buying much differently than they have in the past.
While we think of a traditional blog as the one hosted on your own website, others to consider are the micro-blogging platforms such as X (formerly Twitter). Where you really want to focus your efforts first and foremost is on your blog – what you own and host.
Who cares about your business blog?
Your future customers, current customers, past customers, your mom (well maybe), your internal staff, partners and vendors and you.
Buying decisions are being made more and more by factors that your business may not have considered in the past. How well your business is represented online, the activity (blogging and social media) that takes place surrounding your brand. Is there any discussion happening around your product and service? Yes. Are you engaging in that conversation?
Blogging ROI – Factors to consider
There shouldn’t be any convincing involved in getting a business blog in place. With businesses with blogs ranging from some of the largest companies in the world, to the smallest mom and pop, they all have the same ability: to reach out to their audience and make the connection.
As a businessperson, one of the quickest things I found out shortly after going into business for myself was that people truly do business with people. Blogging isn’t that different. Having trouble generating those sales leads because people don’t feel connected to your brand or know what you are all about? Blogging can help you solve that problem. You can put a real face to the name, and stories in front of the numbers.
Make the most out of business blogging
Getting the most out of a business blog starts with the content marketing strategy. Aligning your business strategy, with sales goals, and learning how and then speaking to your audience will be one of the best decisions you can make for your business.
Aside from connecting to your future audience, it helps your business get found in the first place. The more content on your website, especially well-crafted content, the larger the online footprint you have, thus making the exposure greater. Makes sense doesn’t it? Searchers will see you, and in return learn more about your company.
Capture leads through compelling offers and calls to action. Now that you have the reader’s attention, what are you going to offer them to help answer their questions and solve their problem? Use your blog as a primary source of leads. With more people regularly reading blogs as a source of information, news, and entertainment, you have that excellent opportunity to close the deal.