Why Blog for Business – Your Small Business Marketing

Why indeed! If you think blogging means having to sit at a computer everyday thinking up something important or witty to say to a non-existent audience, then you’ve missed the boat on the important questions of, why blog for business.

Business blogs and blogging are not generally about making money or churning out content daily or worse, several times a day. EEK!

No my dear fellow small business professionals. Blogging is about marketing small business. Business blogging is a way for your company to build a background and platform that lets customers and potential customers understand the core business philosophies underpinning your brand.

I believe it’s less than 1% of blogs [noun: online web logs written and read on the interwebs] that actually make the blogger [noun: person who writes a web log] a full time income.

Nope. Most blogging [verb: the act of writing a web log] is not done for profit. Although that is often the intent of starting the blog for many Internet entrepreneurs.

So Tell Me, Why Blog for Business ?

Well I did promise 3 Great Reasons blogging for business is a good idea so let’s answer the question, why blog for business.

First Reason : Blogging for business allows your business philosophy to be vetted by potential prospects. People who are considering doing business with you want to get to know you better before granting an in person meeting. If you are blogging  regularly, then you’ve built a body of information that any prospect can read which will begin to build rapport before you even get the chance to shake hands. Don’t underestimate the importance of voicing your business positions on various aspects of your company’s ecosystem. This is what will separate your business from the competition.

Second Reason : Marketing small business can be time consuming, especially when staff is small or non-existent. The entrepreneur who wears all the hats has little time. It’s often something like adding a blog to the marketing plan that gets put off because it seems such a chore. That is a MISTAKE! The Internet being what she is [yes I just called the Internet a she which felt right at the time but I don’t really know why I did it] is engaging prospects twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It is the most consistent and controllable small business marketing tool in your arsenal. And if you aren’t marketing, you are not growing your business!

Third and final Reason: Platform. What is platform? It’s the stability beneath your small business marketing. Part of a good public relations, marketing and advertising strategy is having a platform to build on. Why blog for business, because if you do, you are building a very large portion of your business platform from which you can launch many other online properties. Or encourage offline relationships to venture online where you can speak to them more easily, on your terms in a modality that makes the most sense to them.

Why blog for business if you don’t have time?

Let’s talk about the number one misconception surrounding business blogging. That you have to write three times a day, every day, to make your blog successful. That’s just not true.

Professional bloggers, that 1% I mentioned early on, may have to post articles that often to maintain their status, rankings, advertisers and audience. That’s their answer to why blog for business. But you DON’T have to.

The beauty of a business blog is that you get to set the expectation for your audience. Just as you get to choose what hours your business is open to the public, you get to choose how often to blog. So if a monthly posting is your idea of a perfect amount of contact with your clientele, then monthly posts it is. If your small business is dynamic and constantly having to change with the ecosystem, may your postings should be topical and random as well. Always responding to the latest hot button.

For most small business marketing, blogging for business at least once a week is the right volume. There should be enough going on within your business or affecting your business for you to talk about it each week. Just set yourself a time each week to jot down what’s happening in your industry, what conversations you’ve had with clients or colleagues and you have the essence of a blog post. You’ll find that as you stick to a schedule, it will get easier and easier to create the content. A good blog post really only needs to be between 350-500 words. If you get to 1000 words, it probably needs to be split into two posts. After all, we have a very small attention span in the 21st century.

That’s it in a nutshell. Why blog for business – because it could make the difference between staying in business or falling by the wayside.