Why You Should Blog

By Joe Cunningham, Internet Marketing Manager
10/15/2013

The fact that you are reading this implicitly means you know the answer to this question.  I have successfully gotten you to read my blog.  That is, in short, why you should do it too.

You may still ask why, however, so I’ve put together a short list of points on why blogging is so great for your business.

Why Blogging is So Great for Your Business

Web Visitors

The first goal of any blog is to get readers, meaning people who visit your website to read your blog post(s).  You’re a business and your website is your online store front.  How many people do you want walking through it on a daily basis?  Two or two hundred?  Exactly.  A blog will help you do that.

A lot of companies opt out of blogging because “it’s too time consuming,” “not cost-efficient,” “we can’t find anybody who wants to write it,” etc.  No matter what the excuse, it’s not a good one.  How often do you think people browse your services pages on your website?  Now how often do you think they will be viewed when you get blog readers?  It’s simple: do the math.

Guru Status

It’s no big secret that the goal of our blog is to be known as “marketing gurus.”  Of course, there is always more knowledge to know, but becoming an authoritative source based on research, study, and experience is not to be underrated.

Blogging enhances your company image.  It makes you seem smart online.  People don’t hire stupid.  End of story.

SEO

Cranberry SauceI could go on about this all day.  SEO and blogging are like Thanksgiving and… okay not the turkey but maybe the cranberry sauce.  It’s not essential but it’s one of thee best practices for your search engine optimization.  SEO is about creating “link bait” so people will link to your website.  They will only do that if there’s something good there (“content is king” – an SEO adage).  Answer: blog!

I also noticed after a while, that we are getting searches for phrases related to the titles of our blog posts: “Google Analytics for Dummies” for instance has gotten a lot of search traffic in the last month or two, even though I wrote it some time ago.  It’s getting SEO traction and bringing a lot of people to our site.  Chris and Jesse’s blog posts about website and graphic design have done the same.  Now we are more searchable and look more like the gurus we are.  Image can be everything to the internet user.

For a lot more on this point, read my “Blogging and SEO” post.  (Like I said, I can go on about that all day.)

Money!

It’s all leading up to this and can be summarized by this word.  Money is the reason we are in business.  Yes, we are trying to help the world somehow, but we’re not doing it for free.  Free never paid my bills anyway.  If you’ve got a trick for that, please let us all know!

Getting traffic, being a guru people look to, ranking higher on search engines and all of that will in the end convince more people to buy your stuff.  And that’s what it’s all about.  You shouldn’t really need another reason, nor should you ever think blogging is not a part of the profit equation.  Quite the contrary, Dr. Watson!

Online Networking

You may be like “I don’t care,” but you should.  I’m now connected to like 5 zillion people on LinkedIn (okay, not that many, but you get the idea) thanks to my blogging for Cowley.  You will see Chris our awesome web guy added our bios and contact info to the bottom of our blog posts with the “join my network” link for LinkedIn.  You’d be surprised how many people have wanted to connect after reading my blog posts.  Again, that goes back to the guru point.  I did my homework (most of the time), I have some experience, and I write about it.  People love that stuff.  I mean, you’re reading this!

LinkedIn is for linking to smart people who can help you in your career.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve successfully gotten good advice, references, strategies, and leads from it, now that I think about it.  But it’s a lot.  All because I share our blogs there; and then people think I’m smart.

I had a lady call me up directly after she read something I posted.  She was in here the next day for a meeting about a website she wanted to launch.  That is how the cookie crumbles, my friend.

TypewriterPR

PR meaning public relations, press releases - they both work here actually.  You are “doing PR” by putting out a good public image in the way you write.  You have your very own syndication by which to do press releases as well: i.e. what new things you are offering, showcase something cool you did as a company, etc.  Enough said.

Newsletter Fodder

Okay, our big secret out of the bag.  We came up with this great idea to pick four of our blog posts published that month and use iContact (together with the help of our expert web developer, Chris MacSaveny) to auto-generate a newsletter based on that content.  That way, we don’t spend another 25 hours creating new content that will only go into the newsletter and we get all that content in our blog – which is great for SEO.

Lead Gen Email Content

Chris (again, amazing) has set up this email tool for us at Cowley that allows us to send cool links to contacts with our picture and contact info on them: basically, a glorified email stationary with a few more bells and whistles.  I can simply click an blog post or page on the website for that matter and a link will generate on my email that says “I felt like you may be interested in some content from Cowleyweb”; and then underneath is a neat link button with the title of my blog post.

You don’t have to have a fancy-pantzy email system to do that.  Oftentimes, I’ll just email out my blog post links to friends or contacts the old fashioned way.

We also use iContact for lead gen emails.  Attaching an article is a good way to not only catch a little more interest but add a concrete conversion metric to your email.  You can track who opened it, but what then?  You want them to go to your website because that’s where the magic happens.  Why not do it by “read this blog post on…”  Then they are in your “store” and you have a much large chance of “selling” to them.  (“Ah-ha!” you say.  Now you figure it out. [Laughing.])

If You Are Not Convinced…

...give me a call.  And if you are call me too!  We (I) love to blog and can set you up with a plan to jumpstart your website with regular blog posts, a promotion system to get links out there, and a regular stream of readers to your website.  (Read more about our "Blogging" service here.)  You’ll be surprised how much this simple step will help your business and you won’t regret it.

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