Today I’m speaking at Sydney Business Month on blogging and d’oh – I realised I hadn’t blogged in while. Or rather let me clarify – I haven’t written my own blog for a while. I’ve written blogs on GST, the cloud, accounting, starting businesses, closing businesses, seniors in business and women in business – all of which were done for clients. Anyhoo back to my own less than stellar blogging attempts, why anyone would bother doing it and “what is a blog?”
Why blog?
Given you’re probably every bit as busy as me – why would you take precious time out of your week to blog? There are several reasons;
- It does drive new business. Hubspot research showed nearly 60% of all businesses that blog saw it contribute to new business coming through their door.
- GOOGLE!! Blogging drives your position on Google. Okay – less than video, but let’s face it, it’s most likely quicker to knock up a blog than it is to put a decent video together
- Blogging builds opportunities for you and your business. Those opportunities might turn up in the form of new business – but they can also turn up, just as importantly, in the form of alliances, partnerships and relationships.
- Writing a blog for your business allows you to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry
- You can bask in the warm glow from contributing to the wider online community – you never know who you might help
- It can save you time answering those pesky questions that keep cropping up – you can point people to your blog instead
Best of all it allows for people – ie: your potential customers or those considering building relationships with you to get to know you before they pick up the telephone or put their fingers to the keys to send you an email. Many prospects will require several interactions with you before they purchase. In fact if you’re selling something that’s a little more complex than say lipstick or chips, prospects may require up to 10-12 interactions with you before they feel comfortable enough to do business with you.
Blogging and sharing on social media – as part of your integrated marketing activities, will cover off a couple of those interactions – or touchpoints. Having a great website also contributes.
If it’s at all possible, have your blog on your website. Why? Because you want visitors to click about a bit to see what else you do whilst they’re there. Google analytics (a requirement if you’re using your blog for business) tells me that every time I write a blog I get a spike in traffic. And most people have a squizzie at at least 2 other pages whilst they’re here. Especially if I direct them using links like this (which goes to my marketing makeovers for small business page).
It doesn’t really matter what you do for a living or what type of business you run – blogging will drive traffic once you do it consistently. And that’s the key. Set aside an hr every week or every fortnight and, as Nike says, JUST DO IT! After you’ve been doing it for a while, you’ll find you discover your ‘voice’ and it gets easier – the writing, not the setting aside time! At some point you’ll look back and you’ll have built a veritable repertoire of (mostly) useful content.
For other tips on blogging you might like to read this earlier blog on 11 tips to getting started with blogging – which is more of a how to and rules of type blog.
If you’d like to forgo the pain of the flashing cursor and no ideas of what to write about, you might like to get a fresh blog topic delivered daily to your inbox – drop me a note. Or you can join me on Facebook or LinkedIn (look right – and click on the buttons) where I share lots of great content about marketing, building business and using social media for client engagement. Do mention my blog though, otherwise I might think you’re a random (read: scary) stranger.
Enjoy!
