Why Even Bother with Blogging?
by Brandon Croke on 18/04/11 at 9:42 pm
I’ve got a confession to make. I haven’t been the best blogger lately.
Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mariareyesmcdavis/
Sure I’ve got excuses (don’t we all) I’ve been traveling, I’ve been reading, I’ve been thinking, and I’ve been working on some awesome new projects more on those later. But it hit me today during a client meeting that I’m not practicing what I preach. If you’ve ever wondered if or why you should blog, I thought I’d fill you in on some of the secrets of the blogging world.
Blogs can take many different shapes and forms. Some are personal, some are professional, and some are downright ridiculous.
Having a blog is one of the top ways to get traffic to your website.
If you don’t care about traffic.. well I’m not sure why you have a website. My guess is that you’ve got a product to sell, a service to offer, or an idea to share. Whether you’re selling websites or custom watches, you have an audience to reach. It’s time for you to tell your story.
Blogging regularly is the #1 way to improve your writing.
Okay, so I made that statistic up. But I can’t really think of a better way off the top of my head. Sure you’re probably writing e-mails, proposals and text messages all day, but none of these have the longevity and usefulness like a blog. If you are a good blog writer, you will never have trouble landing a job or finding a client. Trust me, they need your writing skills.
Blogging creates a long-term asset for you and your business.
Do you remember your accounting 101 class? On the balance sheet there is a place to keep track of your long and short term assets. Although I’m not sure what the official classification would be, once you write a post you can receive traffic everyday without having to put in another ounce of work. For example my blog is always being visited from people searching How do you show up in someone’s Facebook news feed.
Blogs are a great reference library.
Your customers probably repeat the same questions to you over and over. When you have blog content stored up over time this can be a great thing to send to clients after a meeting. Customer questions are probably the number one thing you should be answering with your blog. You can even repurpose your blog content into white papers or e-books compiling your thoughts over time into a resource you can sell or give away.
In the end writing a blog is about spreading a message, telling a story, and offering some sort of value to the world. You may not think you have much to share, but trust me people have questions everyday. My question is your blog helping answer people’s search quires and driving value to your business or is Google sending them your competitor’s way?Tweet
Janeile
May 4th, 2011
Totally feel you here and it’s HARD when you’re just one person doing all the writing (and you got a billion other stuff to do!). But yes, I was where you are – guilty of not practicing what I preached. So I’m back on it again. I put it on my calendar to write weekly.
Brandon Croke
May 5th, 2011
Janeile, I totally agree with you that it’s hard to be a one person shop. There’s also a time and place for priorities and when you’ve got business to sell or clients to write for, the personal blog may have to take a back seat. Sure the world’s rockstar bloggers post everyday, but that’s their gig and not necessarily ours. Didn’t we have a similar conversation on a comment thread somewhere else? I am having Dejavu and I have no idea how that is spelled.