The Business Benefits of Blogging

When considering a blog for your business, consider this broad business development process:

You might be more familiar with these labels for the same process:

Whatever labels you choose, a blog can help you in each of these three phases:

Development: Survey the market before creating products; publish draft ideas for feedback; keep a private record of your ideas.
Distribution: Get more visitors to your Web site; promote products and services; establish credibility and demonstrate expertise.
Support: Answer frequently-asked questions; provide on-going training material; store electronic information for downloads.

Let's look at these three areas in more detail.

Income

Before we do that, though, you might have noticed that one thing I have not listed here is income itself! In other words, I'm not talking about blogs that generate sales in their own right.

I'll explain ... There is good news and bad news. The good news is that there are bloggers who make a significant income from their blogs. The bad news is that you probably won't be one of them!

Why? Because it takes time, effort, knowledge and persistence. The really successful bloggers make that their business model. For most experts, this isn't the right approach. A blog should complement your business, not be it.

That said, if you're still interested in making money directly from your blog, start by remembering that a blog is a Web site. So first ask yourself, "How do you make money from any Web site?"

Here are some of the answers you might get:

Promote products and link to a shopping cart.
Promote other people's products in return for a commission on sales.
Sell advertising on your blog. For example, if you use Google's AdSense program (see www.google.com for more information), Google places ads on your blog pages and pays you for clicks on those ads. What's more, the ads are related to what you've written in the blog. So even if your blog entry doesn't persuade people to buy your products and services, there's a chance that they could click on Google's ads instead.
Create a password-protected blog that's only accessible via paid subscription.

These things are possible. However, I suggest you use your blog to support your existing business, not to become a business in its own right. Some bloggers do generate a lot of income from their blogs. But that's a full-time job, and not necessarily appropriate for most business owners.

Development

A blog is a perfect place for storing your ideas, even if they're not yet fully developed. Instead of writing full articles, you can get away with brief comments, snippets of an idea or just a single concept in isolation. That's what people expect from blogs.

This doesn't mean that you can be lazy. Poor spelling and bad grammar still turn off readers. However, provided you get these basics right, you have much more flexibility with everything else.

For example, I often answer questions in my blog:

From a development viewpoint, I now have this conveniently stored for future reference. I peruse my blogs from time to time, looking for material for future articles, newsletters and reports.

If your ideas are very raw and not yet fit for human consumption, publish them in a private blog. In other words, just use your blog as a convenient place to record stuff for now.

Distribution (Marketing)

When used correctly, your blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business.

For example, here are just a few of the ways to use a blog to increase your business:

Write material that demonstrates your expertise and authority.
Attract more visitors from search engines. Search engines love high-quality blogs and often give them a very high ranking. I'll explain the reasons below.
Attract links from other Web sites that like the thoughts and ideas you share in your blog.
Write an informative blog entry that links to a specific product or service on your main Web site.
Demonstrate your credibility so that people trust you and hence buy your stuff.
Write blog posts that provide information and then link through to products that go into more detail.
Send the media to it as a show of your expertise, so that you get free publicity for your business.

I mentioned above that search engines love blogs, and it's worth explaining this in more detail, because a well-written blog is one of the best tools for getting a high search engine ranking.

A search engine like Google gets paid by advertisers. Advertisers only pay if lots of people click on their ads. Lots of people will only use Google as long as it continues to provide highly relevant search results.

So Google's focus is to provide highly relevant search results, which then attracts searchers, which in turn attracts advertisers, who pay Google, and everybody lives happily ever after.

So what makes a Web page highly relevant - and hence attractive to Google? Well, broadly speaking:

It has text, not just pictures;
It has information, not just promotion;
The information is related directly to what the searcher typed for their search;
It doesn't have lots of other information for the searcher to wade through;
Other pages on the same Web site are broadly related to this topic;
Other relevant Web pages link to this page.

In your blog, every blog entry has its own unique Web page. Look through the list above and you'll see that your blog entries automatically meet all of these criteria, except the last. A blog entry is mainly text; it provides information; it usually contains the exact words being searched for; it's about a single topic; and it's part of a larger collection of pages on the same topic.

Also, because your blog changes regularly, search engines flag it as a Web site that does require frequent updates, so it will visit it more regularly than it will visit other pages. So, for example, when you launch a new product or service, if you mention it in your blog, that might be the quickest way to get it listed in Google.

Support (Customer Service)

Here are some ways of using a blog for after-sales service or on-going support:

Create a collection of frequently asked questions.
Build an on-line community of customers and clients.
If you run workshops or seminars, create a private blog for attendees, where you provide downloads, answers, and other supplementary material.
Use it for after-sales support of new products. This is especially useful when launching a new product, when it's too early to know exactly what support questions you will get from customers. Use your blog to answer the questions informally; then after a while, take the blog content and use it to create a professional support manual.

Because a blog is usually written from an individual, rather than corporate, "voice", it's a great place to hold informal conversations with clients and build more intimate relationships. In fact, big companies like Microsoft actively encourage their staff to run their own blogs for customers. This gives Microsoft the chance to know what their customers are thinking, and gives customers the chance to have a "friend" within Microsoft who can champion their cause.

What are the disadvantages of a blog?

We've talked a lot about the benefits of blogs. But do they have any disadvantages?

Yes, and you should be aware of them before starting out on your first blog:

Most people will only read your blog if you tell them about it. So your blog is not a replacement for an e-mail newsletter or other direct communication tool. There are tools for having blog content delivered automatically to users, but these aren't in wide use yet.
Users can comment on your blog entries. This is usually a positive thing, but it does open up the possibility of harsh, persistent or offensive critics. If you're working in a controversial area or you sell low-quality products, you might spend more time cleaning up your blog comments than writing your blog!
Good blogs take time to write. I haven't seen any verifiable statistics, but I would bet that for every operational blog, there are at least 20 that have been abandoned like road kill on the information superhighway.

However, these are not reasons not to write a blog. Just be aware of them when you do create yours, so that you don't fall into these traps.

Key words: Internet Marketing, Web 2.0, blogging

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Gihan Perera is the author of "Get Active: Web Sites for Speakers, Trainers, Coaches and Consultants" and "Fast, Flat and Free: What You Need to Know to Stay Ahead in a Connected World". Visit http://GihanPerera.com and get your complimentary copies now.

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