To Blog or Not to Blog, That is the Question
I know many of you that read this blog are self employed business owners. And although this blog is focused on sales and marketing, I want to show you a little snippet of just how impactful a blog can be to your business. After this article, I’ll continue to write tips on blogging every few weeks or so, but with this blog I want to simply give you a feel just how drastically this medium can change your business and sales success for the better.
About 10 months ago, my business partners and I decided to start a blog for our swimming pool company. With a desire to always stay on the cutting edge of the market, we figured such could only help our chances of promoting and growing our business. Because I handle the majority of the sales and marketing within our company, the responsibility to produce consistent and quality content fell mainly on my shoulders. Such a responsibility seemed quite daunting at the time, as I’m certainly by no means a computer geek nor had I ever even considered life as a ‘blogger’. Notwithstanding, I do like to educate and inform, and so writing articles about a subject I’m passionate about came rather naturally for me. Such passion is what I would consider the first critical component of setting up a blog for your business. There are millions of blogs out there, and the sad reality is about 99% are started and then wilt away as a new plant without any water or sunlight.
Now although I’d literally like to take this article in about a thousand directions so a to break down the ins and outs of blogging, I only want to focus for now on the IMPACT a blog can have for you. So why should you be blogging? Here are my top five reasons:
1. Website Traffic
As radio, TV, print, and other mediums are going the way of the dinosaur, the internet has now become everything to everyone. And as we all know, driving customers to your website can be rather expensive. Essentially, what blogging requires is Time, not Money. Just take a look at the following graphics. The first represents the percentage of traffic coming to my swimming pool site BEFORE we started our blog in February of 2009. The second represents October of 2009 traffic sources. As you can see, the difference is mind boggling. In a matter of 8 months we’ve been able to triple our site traffic and we are spending much, much less on search engines like google adwords.
Adwords, shown in yellow, drives 74% of all traffic before blog
Traffic sources after blogging 7 months. Grey represnts Adwords(9%), the rest is all FREE search.
2. Constant Customer Contact
One of the huge benefits of blogging is that anyone who subscribes to your blog is basically giving you a vote of confidence, and permission to contact them in the future as you produce new content. Using swimming pools as an example, the average time it takes for someone to shop for(study) and buy a swimming pool is longer than 12 months. Can you imagine what happens when a potential customer reads your articles over a 12 months time period, week in and week out? With such efforts to educate and inform on your part, the sale is practically inevitable once the shopper is ready to move forward.
3. Sharpen the Sword
Few blogging article make mention of this important point, but one of the great benefits of blogging about your business or product is that it forces you to stay on top of the latest news and products in your industry. As you constantly put your thoughts to pen(or at least keyboard in this case) your mind will be sharpened and your ability to articulate to others about your products and services will only heighten.
4. You’re the Expert
One of the surprising things that happened to me after having produced so many articles regarding fiberglass swimming pools is the fact that I’ve now receive an average of 5-10 emails a week from people around the globe with pool questions seeking help. I’ve also been interviewed by industry magazines and given the opportunity to give seminars. This is all because valuable reader content naturally gives the writer credit and authority to his base.
5. It’s Fun!!
I don’t read this statement enough about blogging. Sure it can be hard work. Sure it takes time. Yes it requires diligence. But boy is it fun! Watching your thoughts and words get read by people from around the globe is rewarding, enriching, and quite fulfilling.
So there you have at least 5 reasons to commence blogging about your products and services. If you have questions about this topic, don’t hesitate to leave them below or just email me directly at marcus1@thesaleslion.com. Best of luck in your blogging efforts!!
