Yesterday Amy Barrett a journalist with Business Week Small Biz called me to talk about a common question from her small business readers: Should (very) small businesses blog?
My answer to Amy is ‘it depends’. There are certainly lots of good reasons for Business owners to launch a blog.
1. Search engines love the frequently updated content on blogs. Notice how often when you perform a search for anything using the keywords that relate to your topic, the first few results are actually blogs. It’s a search engine world.
2. A Blog is another Internet presence. A blog gives your small business another place to be ‘found’ by buyers searching for your products and services. The blog is a powerful tool to build your brand.
3. Blogs are conversations. You have the opportunity to talk directly to your prospective buyers. Blogs are not ads. Blogs are not brochures. You are not “selling” on your blog.
Blogs are places you share information. Information that makes your customers lives better. Talk about a recent conversation you had with a customer. Discuss the most common problems your customers face every day. Explain (do not sell) how your products and services solve problems.
4. Blog articles (posts) are short. Each blog post should be around 200-300 words. (Do as I say, not as I do. I am a recovering, corporate marketer and usually write too much.)
Time saving tip: blogging systems are so well-designed, that you can even sit down on a Saturday and write all 3 posts for the next week at one time. Then you upload each of them to the blog and tell the system which day to “publish” the post.
5. Costs are reasonable. You should hire a designer to create a custom “header” for the top of your blog. After that, you do not need the help of a programmer. I think you can find designers to create the custom header for about the same or less money, than creating a print ad.
So much for a few of the pluses about small business blogging. Here are a couple of drawbacks:
Small business blogs do take time.
You have to be comfortable writing—at least 3 times a week.
You have to think of new topics to write about.
Try this test as you consider starting a blog for your small business. Ask friends, customers, colleagues this question: when you need a new computer, plumber, landscaper, designer—any service for your home or business, where do you look? Do you use the ‘dead trees’ yellow pages?
Everyone I’ve asked over the past year has said, “I dump the yellow pages as soon as they deliver it.” “I use the computer—I’m on it all day anyway!”
Really think about blogging for your small business. Send me your blogging questions. (If you’re counting this post is 465 words. I know…)
I’m not sure what kinds of people you talk to but those “dead tree books” you referenced (actually 40% recycled materials and the rest are wood chips and other lumber surplus) where referenced nearly 15 billion times last year. And that’s just the print versions. 90% of all adults reference them at least once a year, 75% in a typical month, and 50+% on average month. How about on average 1.4X each week?
Ok, blogs may be many of those things you mention, but they are clearly not the only place people will look for information when they are ready to make a purchase.