Why do We Blog for Business?

March 13, 2008

Any search on the web will reveal thousands if not more “business blogs” but why do people do it? What benefit do they get from it?

Some people blog simply because it makes them happy … they have interesting stuff (or at least interesting stuff to them) that they want to share. Others like on this blog want to take it a step further and do some good for their local business community and hopefully help people beyond the Elgin and Chicago areas as well.

So, aside from the warm fuzzy feeling you can get from blogging, what are the benefits of business blogging?

• Promotion of your business, products, expertise in a medium that is indexed by the search engines extraordinarily fast … sometimes within minutes compared to days or weeks with a traditional website. This means that if you have comments on a new product, something in the news, or an announcement it will be transmitted around the world for friends, business partners, and of course potential customers to read.

• By having a well written blog and promoting it you will have a resource that people will trust, by contributing regularly you will build your brand in a way that can reach thousands of people without it being an unsolicited email, cold call, direct mail postcard that gets tossed in the trash immediately.

• As your business blog grows, you will also benefit from hundreds of links back to your company site as well as the blog from other blogs who have repeated your news. Think about it like what happens with the Associated Press … one person on location somewhere writes the story, but hundreds of newspapers all over the country will re-print it. This links back to your site will benefit you by not just driving traffic directly to your site, but also the search engines look at these links as “votes” for your site. While there are dozens of other factors, the number of quality links from trusted and related sources is the #1 ranking factor for search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Live Search (MSN). So, the more quality links the higher your website will rank and the more customers will find your website.

So why are we blogging about our businesses and what will we be sharing with you?

As I wrote earlier, we are a group of small business experts with a wide range of experiences, perspectives, and professions. (you can see our membership list to the right “Grow Together Experts.”)

Our goal is to grow this blog into a place where we can each share something interesting from our week, including the following:

• Product Review that may be of interest to a small business owner (i.e. did you get a new printer, a new book, new computer etc. and really like it? Tell me how it improved your business)

• Article in a trade magazine or newspaper that would be of interest to a small business owner? (i.e. do you want to comment on this month’s Small Business Entrepreneur Magazine’s article about recession-proofing your business?)

• Tips, Tricks, or Articles relating to your particular area of expertise. (this should be self explanatory)

• Is there a new product or service that you want to promote? Tell us (and prospective customers about how it relates to them … For instance Roy starts working with a new web-cam and wants to talk about how cool it is.

• And, Of Course! Accomplishments and News … did you win an award, did you just hire a new employee, are you looking for interns … tell me … tell the world!

Currently our membership is closed, but if you feel that you would like to join our group and are willing to commit to participating on a regular basis, and are in the Chicago area let me know by emailing us info@growtogether.net

James Hills
President and Chief Marketing Officer
marketinghelpnet.com

Phone: 630-233-8336
Web: http://www.marketinghelpnet.com
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Posted in Business Blogging