Blogging is like vitamin D.
Every day we learn some new reason why it’s good for you. Here are a few:
1. Search engines love blogs. Google is getting smarter every day. Well-maintained websites with lots of fresh, compelling content get ranked higher than static “brochure” sites. Do a quick search now and look at the top ten. Most of those websites probably have two very important things in common:
- Fresh, regularly updated content (and lots of it)
- Good references. These sites are linked to from other important, high-ranking websites.
Blogs are the perfect excuse to upload new content on a regular basis. And when that content is timely and interesting to your community of readers, they’ll point links to you from their social networking sites and company websites. Just like in the job market, Google really pays attention to your references. When an important website links to yours. What’s the best way to do that? Be interesting – often.
2. Blogs are social. Unlike static websites, blogs foster two-way conversations with your community members and prospects.
3. Blogs are your home-base. Blogs serve as the “hub” of your social networking strategy. You own the content on your blog, not Facebook, YouTube or LinkedIn. While these companies seem like they’ll be around forever, never forget that the information you store there is not your own.
Some First Steps Toward Your Own Blog:
1. Start reading blogs. Don’t just go read a few blogs and cross it off your list. Subscribe to a few blogs and read them every day. I suggest using Google Reader or something similar so you don’t miss a beat. Choose a few from your industry and a few from another industry entirely just to give you a good feel for what a blog is and most importantly, what it isn’t.
2. Decide whether or not blogging is something you can maintain. After it’s set up, would you have time to write one post per week minimum?
3. Start making a list of possible posts so that when it’s time to start writing, you’ll have a little back-log of ideas. Consider your community and their “personas.” What will spark their interest?
4. Choose a blogging platform and work with someone like me and/or your web designer to make sure you’re getting the biggest bang for your blogging buck. Oh, and did I mention, blogging is practically free, but has the potential to increase your leads up to 60%?
Great Reading From The Blogging Gurus
1. HOW TO: Create a Successful Company Blog, Mark Suster, a Partner at GRP Partners, a Venture Capital firm in Los Angeles, wrote this great guest post for Mashable.
“I’m often asked by entrepreneurs and business owners whether it is worth blogging, and if so, what they should blog about. On the first question, the answer is obvious to me — you must blog as an entrepreneur.”
2. Companies That Blog More Have More Consistent Sales, a reflection on the 2010 State Of Inbound Marketing Report from Hubspot, a Boston-based company specializing in Inbound Marketing/Community Building.
3. Study Shows More Pages Indexed By Google Means More Leads, the results of a study by Hubspot showing that when Google pays attention to you by “indexing” your pages, you will get more leads regardless of the size of your company.
Find my favorite, most recent blog posts about blogging from my Delicious bookmarks.
