what is the point of blogging

there's always time for blogging

“Blog” – even the word gets most business owners backs up. Perhaps they are hearing “spam” or “personal diary” or “unprofessional” or “more work”??? Who knows! Either way it’s worth knowing the benefits of a blog before you decide they are a waste of time.

A blog has value to multiple groups of people and also from a scientific online marketing perspective.

A blog can be as professional or as intimate as you choose, although most companies take the opportunity to inject a little more personality into a blog than they might into any other content on a website.

A blog doesn’t have to be written by the MD exclusively, in fact, it’s probably best if it isn’t

So … let’s get down to “what’s the point”.

Well, firstly a “cared for” blog overcomes one of my personal bug bares that you find on so many websites. “Corporate bull****”, particularly the type that small companies write because they feel that’s the tone that wins big contracts / sales. A blog is 10 times more interesting (insightful) to read on a companies website before deciding whether to engage their services.

You can use a blog to show that you know what you are talking about. This is great on many levels. If you are passionate about your skill or service, shout about it, every detail, regularly. Would you prefer to have your wedding photo’s taken by a “paying the bills” hobbyist or a photography fanatic? It’s hard to tell the difference with corporate website text.

A blog shows that you are real people. You like to do business with real people…? me too.

Blogs are written by people (duh!). Leave your name at the end of each blog post you write. When I have somebody coming to visit me (for interview, meeting or other) the first thing I do is Google them. It’s not impressive to see drunken, sun burnt holiday snaps (usually) in Facebook, but it’s very (very) impressive to see a list of articles that prove this person knows their onions in their industry.

Blogs are loved by search engines. If you use one of the smart free tools to write your blog (like wordpress) your blog will be read by Google and indexed in it’s blog search within 10 minutes of you posting your entry. How good for marketing and website discovery is that?!? (It’s very good).

Blogs also notify other blog owners if you send links or make reference to their blogs. Quite often these other blog owners comment on what you have written, and send a link back to your blog so that their readers know what they are talking about. Let me phrase this sentence in another way…Blogs are a brilliant way to get loads of links from relevant websites!!! (Links are pretty much the currency of the internet).

Still not convinced about the value of blogs?…ok, but at least you took the time to consider some of the benefits.