A Blog for my Small Business?

Saturday, December 20th, 2008 newcorridor

Often, small business owners I speak to are initially opposed to the idea of including a blog for their business. It seems that blogging leaves a negative perception for some. True, there is a vast blogosphere (the blog space in the aggregate) across the Internet today, and much of the blogging taking place is self-absorbed, trivial, and a definite waste of time.

If you’re running a business, I know you’re busy and your time is valuable. After all, “time is money”. Well, that’s the point, really. When you take the right approach, a business blog can mean more money for your business.

Let’s distinguish a business blog from the often silly “personal diary” formats that many people associate with blogging. Unfortunately, the publishing power that a blog affords to anyone who wants to try their hand at communicating to the world, too often results in an uninteresting, uninformative and aimless discourse of words that most of us would rather avoid.

But that same publishing power applies to any business that chooses to leverage the mighty benefits of a blog. Remember, you control your own blog, and you decide how useful and beneficial you want to make the blogging experience for your customers and prospects.

Let’s look at some powerful ways your small business can benefit from a blog.

Traffic generation – when you follow SEO friendly techniques, and provide a constant supply of fresh, relevant and thematically targeted content, a blog can be veritable traffic magnet for you.

Subscription model – readers of your blog can subscribe through the RSS (really simple syndication) standard that is pervasive on the Internet today. Through RSS, your reader automatically receives every new post, content and snippet of information that you publish to your blog. Keep it interesting and informative, and this becomes a captive audience tuned in to your message. The proliferation of SPAM has rendered email delivery less reliable than ever today. The publish/subscribe model through Blogs and RSS feeds is much more reliable than email to get your message delivered.

Content management – when it comes to publishing a consistent and fresh supply of new content on a regular basis, nothing surpasses a good content management system (CMS) to help you organize and manage all of this content easily and efficiently. The truth is that most people don’t do a good job of managing an expanding repository of content on their static websites. Underneath the covers, a blog is actually a really effective content management system, and WordPress is one of the best. With a blog, content management is taken care of for you. You focus on creating great content, not building websites.

Personal Voice – a blog provides an opportunity for a small business to have a more informal and personal interaction with its customers and prospects. You can and should communicate in your own voice, the same way you would talk with your clientele in a face-to-face situation. A static website grows stale for repeat visitors fairly quickly. The conversational nature of a blog always brings an interested audience back for more. This keeps it real for customers and creates assurance and trust that there is actually a “human” behind the website who will provide service.

Customer voice – one of the most important things you can do is provide your customer an open channel to communicate with your business. The interactive nature of a blog makes it easy for your customers to ask questions, provide valuable feedback, and take a proactive role that only helps you to improve your business. This two way conversation with your customer base is also an ideal way to conduct your own market and product research. Test your ideas and see what your customers say, before you invest the money in new products.

Build credibility – a blog is an ideal opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your field or industry. When it comes to your small business, you are an expert, right? (If you don’t think so, we need to talk about this some more). Establishing this credibility is much more difficult to accomplish on a traditional, static website. The personal and accessible nature of a blog allows this to happen in a natural, unassuming manner. When your customers perceive you as a subject matter expert in your field, they will be much more comfortable buying from you.

Promote your products and services – of course you can actually promote and sell your products and services right from your blog. A blog also provides an ideal platform to announce new products, specials, and promotions and send your customers to your main site to actually convert sales.