By Jonah Lopin - Internet Marketing Blog:
I am amazed at the blog-reluctance of many small businesses. I hear things like ‘I don’t have time to blog’, ‘blogging doesn’t make sense in my industry’, and sometimes even the dreaded ‘what the heck is a blog?’
The reality is if your company provides unique products or services, you should be blogging. (And if your company doesn’t, you should probably consider a career change.)
Of course, the overall return on investment on a blog will vary from business to business. But there are 6 fundamental benefits to corporate blogging that should not be overlooked:
1) Gain Visibility as a Thought Leader
Each thoughtful post on your blog is a public demonstration of your thought leadership, personal integrity, humor, and professional insights. You don’t have to refute one of Einstein’s theories to get respect. For example, a summary of recent trends in your industry, or a reaction to a recent news article can be extremely effective blog posts.
2) Engage Customers in a Dialogue
If you blog using a solid blogging engine, readers will have the option to comment on each article. Folks who comment on your blog may be sales leads, or they may just challenge or support your views. Either way, comments beget comments, and you will soon be at the center of an industry-relevant dialogue with customers and partners.
3) Every Blog Article is an SEO
The much-discussed ‘long tail’ of search refers to highly specialized, low-traffic search terms that represent a significant amount of total searches. Translation: lots and lots of people are searching online for lots and lots of random things. You can’t realistically optimize your site for every long tail search term, but you can certainly write blog posts targeting niche keyword phrases that are likely to draw highly qualified prospects. For example, blog a reaction to a speaker in your vertical at a local tech conference. You may not draw much natural search traffic, but there is a good chance your blog will rank well very soon for searches like ‘vertical + conference + speaker + city’, and those visitors may be highly interested in your reaction to the speech.
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