Tweak Your Biz » Marketing » The Business Of Blogging

The Business Of Blogging

by Barney Austen on June 10th, 2010
7 Comments



Blogging is an integral part of a successful social media campaign.  I know that I certainly use blogging in my business as the “glue” against which the rest of the campaign is based.

blogging

Blogging gives my business

  1. A platform to share ideas and thoughts not only on my own business, but on business in general.
  2. A learning tool. In order to write posts, I have to research and read other peoples posts. I am learning all of the time.
  3. A mechanism for driving creating a greater web presence and page ranking.
  4. The ability to talk to existing and potential customers.
  5. The ability to reach a global audience.
  6. A tool to possibly show thought leadership and expertise

I use WordPress (self-hosted) and the number of seriously cool plug-ins that can be used to enhance the blog, from SEO to Comment management, makes the blogging experience much easier.

So everyone should be doing it, come on get with it….

But;

  1. Blogging can take a considerable amount of time out of your day. As Chris Brogan points out, blogging is not your job (unless of course it is!).
  2. It requires patience and practice, practice, practice. You will not see results straightaway and you will get some posts wrong!
  3. You may not get any readers for a while, the first days/weeks you might only get a hit or two. If you write well and relevantly though, this will improve.
  4. If you are using it to develop your business, you need to plan what you are going to write and how you are going to measure success.
  5. Your readers may not be your customer target. It this is the case, you need to review what you are writing and how.
  6. Like all social media, blogging is a means to an end – not the end itself. It does not replace the requirement for you to get out and meet your customers.  It will help you drive your business – especially if you build a successful blog. Some folks like Chris and Seth Godin have made a really good living out of it but it takes a huge amount of time. Don’t stop doing other marketing just to write in the hope that you will generate all business from day 1 from this avenue of marketing.

So should you still have someone in your business blogging? Certainly – just be conscious of what that actually means though.

What are your thoughts?


Photo : tnarik



Category: Blogging, Blogs, Marketing Strategy, Social media Marketing

Tags: , , , , , ,

The Author:

Budding entrepeneur working on software product solutions for business. My background is mainly operational and senior management roles in mobile telecoms and software houses. Areas of expertise include professional services, out-sourcing, team management and general operations management. I've made the conscious decision to create my own company having spent the last 20 years learning in the corporate world. In my contributions to this forum, I will share some insights and learnings that I've picked up along the way and hopefully they will be useful to some or all! http://www.myprojecttracker.com

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  • http://twitter.com/fredchannel Fred

    Nice one Barney!
    Even though blogging started a few year ago it very new to many businesses. For that reason, they haven’t bought yet into the idea or picture that this actually works. There’s little you can do to make someone understand the power of blogging, or social networks, etc. This interest is something that needs to appear within the person itself. IF you’re enlightened to think this could work, then you’ll have the spark of will, try it and be consistent to see the tree grow.
    After that, if “time” is genuinely as issue, simply write down all those things that you’re doing to promote your business that are not working or stuff you have been doing for a while without getting results. Scratch those out and start using that time for blogging instead :)

  • http://blog.myprojecttracker.com Barney Austen

    Hi Fred. Great addition to the post – thanks for that. I especially like the hint about writing time all the things you are doing to promote your business and replacing the stuff that doesn’t work with blogging – nice one!

  • http://www.btbtraining.com/blog Niall Devitt

    The recent FB tabs issue highlighted to us all how our blog/website is the only thing we really control. For that reason alone it should be the fulcrum on which a SM campaign is based. Your point about a learning tool is one that it often overlooked but it’s so true. Read a wonderful analogy about blogging & social media recently, it’s like sex! you are either getting it or you’re not!

  • http://blog.myprojecttracker.com Barney Austen

    :) . Agree 100% on it being fulcrum – good point well made. Thanks for the comment.

  • http://twitter.com/IrishSmiley Frederique Murphy

    Barney,

    As always, GREAT post; and VERY convincing ;-)

    I agree with you and even though, I never use the world glue, blogging is for me although the centre of all of my social media activities and it is how I talk about it when sitting down with a client during a social media implementation workshop.

    For me, a blog, is a place where you give, give and give; you share your opinions and views and you start conversations; I have met so many people through my blog posts and it first started as a virtual conversation, and then moved onto a face-to-face conversation.

    I always recommend a few best practices, particularly around the first post, as so many of us would often read the first post; decide and commit on a frequency is key for me and helps the readers; being consistent in what you write is also a plus, as the readers know what to expect.

    Also, one more thing, which I often hear; the “success” of the blog itself should not be calculated on the amount of comments. Many people are “lurkers” (In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates actively. Research indicates that “lurkers make up over 90% of online groups” Wikipedia). However, they are often frequent readers. If people are looking for validation, I recommend using analytics to view the stats such as visits and also consider using buttons, such as Share this, RT this, Like this, which make it easier for the readers to share the blog posts.

    To finish, I would say again, GIVE and START conversations ;-)

  • Anonymous

    Barney

    Useful post for someone thinking about starting to blog or someone thinking about quitting blogging.

    Blogging is hard work and takes time to develop (although the mushrooming of twitter/LinkedIn has made it easier to get to readers quicker).

    There are huge benefits but I think for longevity as a blogger you have to enjoy writing or be interested in what you are writing about.

    P

  • http://www.tweakyourbiz.com Niall Devitt

    Glad you found them useful :)

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