Should I Blog For My Business?
This was a question asked at a VA forum I belong to and below is my response.
I’m a blogging advocate and own 10 blogs today. There was a time when I couldn’t understand why anyone would want more than two – one for business and one for personal. I began a blog for a client 2 years ago as she’d read about them and wanted one. But to really understand what I was doing, I started one for my own business and did some exploring. I still didn’t really get it till about 8 months later, Christmas 2005 I decided to start up a family blog, instead of the annual Christmas newsletter and had fun with it. Then one of our cats went missing and then when he turned up injured 4 days later I posted photos of him on my blog. Well, I could have been knocked over with a feather! People started posting comments from all around the world asking about our cat. I suddenly got hooked – people were interested in what I was writing so I kept writing more, both for my business blog and my family blog. Although I changed the style of writing for the business blog so that it was more personal and invited interactive comment.
I decided to make my business blog a bridge for the gap between these forums for VAs and information for clients outside of the forums. The VA blog is now well established with lots of information for VAs and clients alike and I get comments fairly regularly – although still not as many as I’d like. But I get somewhere around 3,500 visitors a month and have many subscribers.
Early 2006 I wanted to try out the WordPress software – I’d been using blogger before then. So I found another topic of interest to me to try it out and did a personal study of the Proverbs 31 Woman. What I didn’t realise was that there was going to be a global interest in that topic and a journalist in the US actually pointed to my blog when commenting about a senator’s drinking problem. These days that blog gets well over 4,000 hits a month and I’m now turning the blog into a book as I know there is interest in what I’ve written.
Blogs work best when they’re themed – if you wander all over the place with it you won’t retain an audience. And they’re great for people who love to write, as I do (can you tell from this post?
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My client who started this STILL does not get it although I’ve explained how it works several times but it hasn’t clicked and only the occasional post is put up on their blog. Blogs need to have fresh regular content.
I also manage a blogging chat forum via yahoogroups.com and the blog that lists the URL submissions has lots of ‘how tos’ about blogging on it and links to thousands of free templates. So, a simple client request has turned into a passion for me and I’ve learnt heaps through it. It also meant I had a new service to offer clients – I now host several blogs and help clients set up blogs, and am a co-contributor on a few blogs. It is a great way to get exposure for your business because everywhere I’m listed as an author there are direct links back to my website.
In answer to the question – if you feel you have something to say and enjoy writing, then certainly set up a blog for your business. It’s an additional tool that helps personalise ‘you’ – makes you more real to people online. But if you don’t enjoy writing and don’t feel you could regularly submit new content, then it wouldn’t be a good idea. There are heaps of ‘dead’ blogs all over the web, people who started off with a great idea but one year down the track it still has only 2 or 3 posts and really is a waste of space.
So, there you have it – I hope this helps you make your decision about whether or not to blog. KMT
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