Discover the Real Reason you should Blog for Business

By now, as a small business owner, you’ve likely seen all sorts of articles and posts on why it’s important to have a blog to promote your business.

www.Entrepreneur.com has a great article (it’s a bit dated, but still worthwhile) Should You Start A Business Blog?  The answer is yes and their primary reason is as a marketing tool to help generate sales leads.  Here are some other key points from the article:

  • A blog allows you to interact with your clients in a totally different way than any other marketing approach.  You can educate and get to know prospects without ‘selling’ to them.
  • Because they are interactive, a blog can be used for real-time candid feedback and product development ideas.
  • A blog gives your company a personal side and a personality (although this is less of an issue for small businesses, it’s still important).

These are all great points, but if those aren’t enough, here’s a great article from Inc. Why you should blog for your business.  The main focus of the article is client interaction and driving traffic to your website – both excellent reasons for having a quality blog for your business.

The Best Reason for blogging about your business

These are all great points and I agree with all of them.

However…for most small business owners (that aren’t primarily online businesses) the best reason for business blogging that rarely gets talked about is that by blogging for your customer base / target market you must periodically put yourself in their shoes.

This is a process that will require you to routinely (at least once or twice a week) stop fighting the daily fires, pull back to a more strategic level on your business and give some conscious thought to what your customers and potential customers would like to know about your industry, product or service.  In a perfect world, you should be doing this kind of thinking anyway – it’s a key attribute for successful sales and marketing.

Ideally you would get feedback and comments from your audience, but even if no one is reading your blog (they will over time) just going through the process and looking at things from your customer’s point of view is hugely valuable.

As an example, if you have a business focused on Math Enrichment for kids your blog should generally focus on things that parents of those kids are interested in, with significant bonus points for topics that overlap with your business.

The guys over at Gateway Blogging made a somewhat similar point with a recent post Understanding Your Market – that focuses on the extreme need for business owners to really understand what they’re customers want and think.  Hint:  Your customers are not the same as you are, don’t market based on what you like.

How to get started?

So what’s next?  Now that you have the most important reason for creating a business blog, there are tons of opportunities to learn about how to go about creating that blog and then fine-tuning it as you go (continuous learning is another benefit of blogging).  That’s fodder for a bunch of future posts.

If  you want something more specific – here’s a resource that might be helpful:  8 Steps on How to Start a Blog

Share your thoughts on the benefits of blogging here.  What do you like about this blog?  What would you like to see that you’re not seeing so far?  I’d love to hear your comments.

Shawn Kinkade  www.aspirekc.com