I am amazed at the blog-reluctance of many small businesses. I hear things like “I don’t have time to blog”, “blogging doesn’t make sense in my industry”, and sometimes even the dreaded “what the heck is a blog?”
The reality is if your company provides unique products or services, you should be blogging. (And if your company doesn’t, you should probably consider a career change.)
Of course, the overall return on investment on a blog will vary from business to business. But there are 6 fundamental benefits to corporate blogging that should not be overlooked:
1) Gain Visibility as a Thought Leader
Each thoughtful post on your blog is a public demonstration of your thought leadership, personal integrity, humor, and professional insights. You don’t have to refute one of Einstein’s theories to get respect. For example, a summary of recent trends in your industry, or a reaction to a recent news article can be extremely effective blog posts.
2) Engage Customers in a Dialogue
If you blog using a solid blogging engine, readers will have the option to comment on each article. Folks who comment on your blog may be sales leads, or they may just challenge or support your views. Either way, comments beget comments, and you will soon be at the center of an industry-relevant dialogue with customers and partners.
3) Every Blog Article is an SEO Opportunity
The much-discussed “long tail” of search refers to highly specialized, low-traffic search terms that represent a significant amount of total searches. Translation: lots and lots of people are searching online for lots and lots of random things. You can’t realistically optimize your site for every long tail search term, but you can certainly write blog posts targeting niche keyword phrases that are likely to draw highly qualified prospects. For example, blog a reaction to a speaker in your vertical at a local tech conference. You may not draw much natural search traffic, but there is a good chance your blog will rank well very soon for searches like “vertical + conference + speaker + city”, and those visitors may be highly interested in your reaction to the speech.
4) Blogs Are Link Bait
Very few websites or bloggers will link to the “products and services” page on a corporate website. People don’t link to corporate advertisements. On the other hand, a good blog article is an industry-specific insight or a thoughtful critique. Blog articles garner links because they are interesting, informative, and not overly corporate or sales-focused. The benefit to you is that more links means better search engine rankings and more site traffic, which translates into more sales leads.
5) Humanize Your Brand
Blogs offer an opportunity for a company to present its insightful, helpful, thoughtful side. Through a blog, prospects will get a sense of your company’s people, culture, and vision. Blogs are an opportunity to provide a less antiseptic view of your company that is more personal and less “corporate”. Blogs can humanize your brand.
6) In Google, Fresher Content = Better Website
Google will periodically crawl websites looking for new and updated content. In general, it is better to have Google crawl your site as often as possible. Sites that get crawled more often have more frequent updates and more authority. Blogging consistently ensures there will be fresh content on your site.
Despite these reasons why companies should be blogging, the same 2 objections surface time and time again:
1) I Don’t Have Time to Blog
The truth is you don’t have time *not* to blog. You probably already write blog articles, you just don’t call them that. Blogs are the new email newsletters. Most anything that could go in your newsletter can go in your blog. You can still send the content out via email, and readers can subscribe to your blog to get posts via email. Portions of white papers can also make excellent blog articles. But a blog is better than a newsletter or a white paper because readers can join the debate and be positioned to respond to other “calls to action” you may place adjacent to or within posts. In addition, readers will be able to navigate your blog to read older articles that would otherwise be in a deleted newsletter or white paper. Best of all, each blog article you post will provide lasting benefit because it is a web page that can be optimized, indexed, and drawing natural search traffic for you ad infinitum.
In addition, quality blogging engines can support multiple authors, so more than one leader in your organization can post articles. This takes the pressure off any one individual. And remember that a good blog post might just draw a parallel between two or three recent articles, or suggest an explanation for a puzzling industry phenomenon. A good article doesn’t have to be a PhD thesis.
2) What if My Customers Actually Find Out What I’m Thinking? Some professionals don’t like the idea of blogging because it means relinquishing control over some elements of the corporate brand. A blog is less formal than a press release or an official marketing message, and the comments left by readers cannot be predicted. The point here is… too bad! In today’s world, consumers have access to thousands of opinions about your brand, and thousands of articles, commentaries, product reviews, etc. that will certainly impact the buying decision. The idea that you can control exactly how your brand will be perceived or keep consumers in the dark is outdated. The truth is your best option is to engage customers in an honest, open dialogue. Be confident that transparency is the best policy, and customers will reward your candor.
In closing, get out there and blog!
Inbound Marketing Blog Feed
Erald 8:44 AM on August 25, 2007
Great post , a really interesting insight into the depths of PPC.
Leo Piccioli 10:34 PM on September 02, 2007
Very interesting, thanks. I have translated to Spanish part of the article in my blog and added two more reasons: 7. A blog is an excellent tool to explain the market what you are doing (and why); vendors, customers, and competitors (obviously, when you want them to know) 8. In my experience, the blog has been great in attracting talent aligned with our values.
LawyerSpeak 6:10 AM on November 14, 2007
I enjoyed the post. Does anyone have any examples of good blogs by law firms?
Josh Richards 3:30 PM on November 28, 2007
LawyerSpeak: Look at the site for Ben Glass @ http://www.vamedmal.com/ He has a blog and some other nifty marketing strategies for his law firm.
Ridzwan 8:03 PM on November 28, 2007
The points mentioned are all good. However... This post is about why small companies should be blogging. Then it mentions unique products and services. Unfortunately, the great majority of small companies do not have unique products or services. What they can do, the big companies can do better. But the eight points that have been raised so far are all very good and are applicable to all companies, whether or not they have unique products.
Terinea Weblog 4:24 AM on November 29, 2007
Excellent advice, I also find English Cut, Stormhoek wine and Dell's nightmare with the blogsphere good examples to talk about. Jamie
jack 6:50 AM on December 30, 2007
Thank you for continuously providing useful information for the small business community. Hopefully there will be more.
Scott Thompson 4:42 PM on April 09, 2008
Does anyone recommend a good blog for finding people who are exploring the possibilities of opening their own franchised business? I'm an Area Developer for Fitness Together and Elements Therapeutic Massage in the Metro NYC area and was looking to meet other bloggers who do what I do or have ideas on what blogs I should go on.
Thanks,
Cynthia Mulder 2:18 PM on September 11, 2008
I agree about the blogging; I have a separate blog site (http://destinationpanama.wordpress.com) and I am happy with the traffic, one question: How can I add a blog to my existing website? Can I combine them? Will a video inserted into the site also help with the ranking?
Jonah Lopin 5:15 PM on September 12, 2008
Cynthia,
The easiest way to "add" a blog to your website is probably to create a subdomain (e.g., blog.destinationpanama.com) and then host the blog on that subdomain. It can still be a Wordpress blog actually (you don't need to move it!), you just need to pay them $30 or so to use a non-Wordpress domain name. It's fairly important you do this so that the authority associated with your inbound links start accruing to your website, not to Wordpress!
Jonah
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Alex 12:14 PM on December 11, 2008
Great post. I'm fortunate my bosses "get it." It's funny, though, when I give talks to groups of small businesspersons on blogging--they just think its a waste of time to blog. I have made some converts, but your post has given me more ammo. Thanks.
matt mernagh 12:27 PM on January 15, 2009
of course small businesses have unique products and services. small businesses are more effective than corporations at predicting market changes and responding to them quicker. a well written blog will do amazing for a small business. if you can't write it, hire someone.
Philip Allen 12:28 PM on January 15, 2009
Small businesses should blog for the 8 reasons given above as creates a difference so the blogging small business can become the supplier of choice for a bigger & more stable slice of the market
margaret 5:38 PM on January 18, 2009
While I agree blogging can be a powerful marketing tool, I think there's a missing ingredient - ie where do your customers go for information.
For example, prospects & customers in our industry do not 98% of the time, go online to look for a new supplier. They wait for the suppliers to come to them. (I've tested this in a variety of ways - most of the time I pick up overseas visitors, a market we're not aiming for and would find a challenge to service well.)
Once they know about a supplier, they *might* check them out online, but the widest majority (by a long shot) assess the potential supplier face to face.
I would caution folks - before you start investing hours and hours into blogging, be sure you know enough about your marketplace to know what they will really respond to. Some marketplaces may take years to respond and the time/money could well be spent more wisely.
Having said that, if you're already producing content for a newsletter, then it makes sense to re-purpose that content into any and every format you can manage. (And newsletters, if done right, can be enormously powerful marketing.)
Ed Rafacz 11:41 PM on March 06, 2009
I have had my Blog up for a week now at www.nonrevwebsite.com/blog .
The website grader has not picked it up yet. Does that mean its not getting to the search engines?
Zulfnore 7:43 AM on April 03, 2009
Great advice - excellent for all bloggers although the emphasys seems to be on small businesses - I can understand that since they seem to be shying away from the blogging idea.
True indeed blogging is the new marketing tool and highly recommend it to all no matter if your an in individual marketer or a high flying big corporate.
Thanks for sharing - lol infact am tempted to take the article and splash it on my site but I'll settle for a link back :)
@Ed Rafacz - I think your blog could do with a little face lift, get rid of that tag line "Just another WordPress weblog" and put a unique one to your blog - some SEO will help! Change ur permalinks to show atleast your post titles in the add and not the current default of "http://nonrevwebsite.com/blog/?p=73" <<< by wordpress. If you wana know how to do this please get intouch
Bill - SEO Web Design 3:02 AM on April 28, 2009
Thanks for sharing. great post. In fact, blogging is a platform to communicate with customer in 1 to 1. It is one of the way to enhance the branding as well.
Bobby Parker 11:47 AM on May 08, 2009
Well... I just sent this to my department, see blogging works!
Mr.Choice 1:52 AM on June 12, 2009
There is no doubt that this post is a truly insightful one. I agree that blogs are basically the new email newsletters. Great stuff!
William D. Chapman 9:56 PM on July 28, 2009
I have tried to utilize these tips on my blog for our law firm: http://www.smithchapman.com/blog/. I would be interested in any feedback anyone has. Thanks.
Bill
Jonah Lopin 10:29 AM on July 29, 2009
Bill,
Since you are a HubSpot customer I recommend you post your question in the customer forums at http://success.hubspot.com/Customer-Discussion-Forum. You'll surely get some great advice from other customers and HubSpotters!
Jonah