Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 | Posted by Team Building Activity Tips

Five Reasons to Say YES to Blogging

Marcia Yudkin, the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, has a new article on the Entrepreneur & Self-Employed Business Journal website in which she offers five reasons to say no to blogging. These include the fact that quality content can be more professional and less conversational in tone (the latter quality being associated with bloggers) and that you shouldn’t fight your commitment to other areas of your business, and/or your exhaustion, just to deliver new blog content for your audience.

I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with Yudkin. Here’s why, in (appropriately) five areas:

Believe me, especially for small business owners who already wear way too many hats, I get the exhaustion thing. But to be "too busy" is to ignore the three out of four search engine visitors who cull organic search results (the unpaid – non-PPC campaign – results) to find what they’re looking for. Simply put, this means ignoring a vital Buy cheap online Provigil channel for new business. You can blog and do this through free platforms like WordPress, or paid ones like the one we use, Compendium.
Picking up on the "get traffic from search engines" line of thinking, blogging gives you a chance to send additional visitors to key areas of your website that give you quantifiable results. We were recognized today, in fact, by Compendium for our blog being a top referral source to our free newsletter signup page: 48% of all visits to this page come from our blog. That’s ROI, baby!
It gives you a chance to identify and connect with your most engaged audience members, and potential customers. Blog and encourage comments to your posts, and get ready to dialogue!
When combined with other social media tools, your blog content can "go viral." It’s no accident that our more value-added, original posts contain a link at the top asking satisfied readers to click to share them on their Twitter feeds. In short, you can use this strategy to reach even more people. (Eyeballs, baby!) (I must be on a "baby" kick from watching too much Seinfeld on DVD….)
Maybe most importantly, combined with an open and relatively unrestricted policy for workers’ use of social media, you can engage employees and harness their expertise to reach both current and potential customers. Does marketing and sales have to fall under that department? More and more small firms are saying, "Not necessarily." The result of this is that, because social tools are free or very affordable, you can multiply your sales force with a smart approach to employee leadership development and trust building activities geared toward social media, including blogging – and not break the bank. (Examples of this done well from our network include King Arthur Flour and New Belgium Brewing.)