Remembering Your Purpose is Essential for Your Business Blog
Ross Furlong of blogstar.co.uk, recently posted a great infographic about business blogging in one of the LinkedIn groups that I follow. With the post, he asked a good question: are corporate blogs an inward facing vanity project or a marketing powerhouse for customer engagement?
- *Original infographic posted here: http://www.blogstar.co.uk/our-blog/
Why Do Businesses Blog?
In answer to his question, I reflected on the stats concerning “why” a business blogs. Seventy percent of the responders said that they blog to share expertise, in comparison to the 52% who said that they blog to attract new customers. While sharing expertise is a definite draw for people to read your blog, if this is your ultimate goal for blogging, you haven’t yet internalized the purpose of a corporate blog.
While sharing expertise is what we are doing when we write for a corporate blog, it is not the why, the purpose for investing time and money into a corporate blog. The ultimate purpose for business blogging is to gain customers. If this purpose is not internalized in the hearts and minds of those who write or direct these blogs, they will be missing the mark, and missing out on a lot of opportunity to gain customers.
Your Purpose in Blogging Determines Your Content
The difference between having a mindset that you are blogging to share expertise or blogging to gain customers lies in the content that you will produce as a result of that mindset. If you are blogging to share expertise, then the answer to Ross’s question is that you are blogging as an inward facing vanity project. Your content, then, will not necessarily answer the questions and concerns that your customers care about. You might hit the mark sometimes, but more often than not, you will simply be admiring your own stockpile of intelligence.
Blogging for Leads
On the other hand, if your mindset is to blog to gain customers, you will have your customer’s needs and concerns as your goal for writing. Your blog topics will answer their questions, stimulate their curiosity and result in engagement. This is when your blog turns into a marketing powerhouse for customer engagement, as Ross suggested a blog should be. But I would go even a step further and say that if you keep this goal (gaining customers) as your central focus, your blog will be not only a powerhouse for customer engagement, but a resource for leads.
So keep your purpose at the forefront of your mind, internalize it and then act on it when you write for your blog. And that’s how you blog for leads.
Related posts:
- Getting the Most out of your Business Blogging: Re-purpose your Content
- Is your Business Blog a Cost Center or a Revenue Generator? Maybe that’s your problem
- How to run a business blog with minimal time
- Business Blogging Success Summit 2011 by Social Media Examiner and Blog World
- Are we having Blog Casserole for dinner again?
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