Why Should I Blog for Business?

There is no getting around the fact that blogging is very hard work. It can be extremely difficult to find the inspiration and the time to add one 450 – 1000 word article of unique content each and every day of the week (including weekends and holidays). You need to come up with ideas, do research, write, edit, and optimize each post.

Effective blogging requires that you understand and speak to your target audience. Just because you build it does not mean they will come. You actually have to get out there and market your blog. Business blogging is a long term strategy for business growth, not an overnight fix. No wonder the vast majority of blogs have been abandoned after just a few months.

So, why should I blog for business and how can it help us grow sales? If you run a small business, you likely get the power of business blogs when it comes to building community and achieving better rankings in Google. If you don’t have a business blog yet, you know you need one but probably haven’t found the time.

However, if you work in Corporate America as either a consultant or employee; upper management has probably labeled your blogging idea as a waste of time. This is likely because they get brand management but are clueless about tribe management. Given comments like this, we can assume they do not understand the internet, e-commerce, search engines or search engine optimization.

Goal: More Sales

Action: More Pages = More Links = More Authority/Trust (Google) = Higher Rankings = More Traffic = More Sales

Obviously, you need a website which can actually convert visitors into customers or everything else is not going to work.

From Leslie Rohde (seo expert who charges $500+/hr)

• It is true that content is king, but the handmaiden of content is linking structure. You can think of content as bullets, and linking structure as aim. With enough bullets, we don’t need much in the way of aim. But by taking careful aim, we make every bullet all the more valuable.
• Links accomplish three things. First, link text is visible text on the page where it appears. This text is counted in Google’s on-page analysis as more important to the topic of the page than is plain body text. A page that contains outbound links on a given topic appears then to be about that topic.
• Secondly, link text is associated with the page that is the target of the link. This is one of two great innovations that Google popularized (the other discussed next). No particular term was given to this innovation, so in the development of OptiLink, which is all about linking, we coined the term Link Reputation to differentiate the analysis of link text from the mere counting of links (called Link Popularity).
• The third key effect links have on ranking is the distribution of PageRank. PageRank is the second, but actually more famous, innovation in ranking developed by Google’s founders. Optimization of PageRank is the single most complex aspect of ranking at Google and is generally very poorly understood. The PageRank algorithm itself seems simple enough, after all, it is just a single equation, but it is applied recursively across the entire web! The results are often unexpected, but there are some simple “rules of thumb” that are very useful.
• PageRank is a “zero sum game.” The total number of pages you have to work with sets your maximum PageRank. This gives us the first rule of thumb: He with the most pages, wins. The more pages you have, the more PageRank you have to work with. So which is better, one long page or two shorter pages? So long as they are not too short, two pages are better than one (and no, we don’t really know how short too short is).
• But PageRank is also about linking structure. The way you link your pages together, and to other sites, controls how you use the total PageRank you have. Unfortunately, the normal linking structures we typically like to use to provide good user accessibility to all the pages within our sites does not generally distribute PageRank to our best advantage.

Source: Mapping and Tracking Dynamic Link Strategies

The internet is a numbers game. The more content, pages, and information you have (cast a wider net); the more opportunities you have to make money. Wikipedia is a great example of an 800lb gorilla that can rank for just about anything, without trying, due to the authority/trust they have built. The genius of their business model is that unpaid users create all the content for them. It also helps that they are not a competitor for e-commerce sites, so nearly everyone links to them for their wonderful content.

Typically, the easiest way to grow the size of an e-commerce site is by adding new products (each product equals one page). If you have a small business with an extremely narrow/limited product offering, you must find other ways to grow your website. Blogs are basically content management systems (CMS) that make it easier to add new pages. Each new post equals one new page and one more opportunity to rank (show up) when someone is searching for keywords related to your market (you have done your keyword research, haven’t you?). In addition, Google loves fresh content and clearly gives favor to active blogs when ranking pages.

So, what is your excuse for not having a business blog? You do realize that blogs will change your business, don’t you?

Image Credit: jeaneeem