Business Blogging: Big Benefits, Low Cost

I know a lot of business owners think of marketing as if an armed bandit were asking them, “Your money or your time?” That’s why they fall prey to schemes and offers that tell them that if they only follow some secret technique or method or if they let the latest witchdoctor perform the current voodoo, business will flow in and they won’t have to spend all of that money and waste all of that time on marketing their product or service. And more often than not, they’re disappointed and suspicious of all marketing because the latest scheme they tried didn’t work.

But here’s the bad news: it doesn’t have to be your money or your time. It’s both.

Are you familiar with the term TANSTAAFL? It stands for There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. There are very few companies that have a product that is so perfect and is released at the right moment that they don’t have to do anything to sell it. And guess what: you don’t have one of those companies.

I’ve talked about this before in Marketing Ain’t Free. But today, I’m going to talk about one of the things that may take less of your money and time than most marketing methods: business blogging.

The business blog give you a remarkable opportunity. You can speak directly to your customers and prospects and speak with them often without filling their email inbox or ringing their phones off the hook. And what’s more surprising is this: people are really interested in hearing about your product, your business, and you!

Writing can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. What you need for your business blog is a short story, every day, about a customer experience, an industry issue, or something you care about. Just a few simple paragraphs. And if you do it often, ideally five days a week, you’ll find that your search engine rankings improve without spending a dime on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You’ll find that you’re opening discussions with customers and prospects, and you’ll find that others in your organization will better understand how you think about your own company.

What’s not to like?

And if you as a business owner or leader just don’t feel you can do it on your own, partner with a professional writer, either someone inside your organization or someone like me (that’s my pitch for today. You can reach me at [email protected]) . Then spend a few minutes every so often telling your writing partner what’s on your mind. Take them to lunch. Give them a call. Dump out all of those stories and thoughts and let them put them into sentences and paragraphs for you. I do this for clients and they quickly get to the point where they enjoy telling me about their business and start saving up their experiences and thoughts to tell me. And they get real enjoyment and pleasure at seeing the resulting stories and the conversations with customers and prospects the blog posts open up.

Or try this: fire up your video camera and tell it your stories – just keep it under 3 minutes. These can be very effective.

Just get out there and do something!  Make a six-month commitment to posting to your blog twice a week and see what happens. My bet is if you do this AND promote that you’re doing it, you’ll see you traffic increasing and some very interesting conversations opening up. Compared to other marketing efforts and campaigns, this is cheap and easy.