Should a business waste time blogging

As I see it, in our tightly woven, inter-connected society, relating, understanding, and communicating with your clients on a timely basis is job one.

Just so we are all on the same page, a blog is simply an online journal about your company, while interacting with your customers. You share, they respond. Pretty simple.

Sales drives business and blogs drives sales. Do you want to find customers by cold calling, running newspaper ads, sending postcards, attending trade shows or simply answer the phone and take orders. If you are like me, I prefer to answer the phone. Heck, if I can, I’d prefer you just order something on the website and do away with the phone altogether. But in a seriousness, customers have needs, and if you delivery a solution to their need, they need to know about.

With blogging, your customer can search, “How to fix neck pain” and BAM, your blog shows up because, as a Chiropractor, you shared your wisdom. Inevitably, I hear, “But Doug, I really don’t have any wisdom to share. What can I blog about ?” Let’s use an accountant as an example. Here are a few possible topic :

1. 10 Tax Laws that will affect your next return
2. 5 categories you missed on your last return
3. Will I have enough savings at retirement
4. What’s a Mutual Fund
5. What’s 401k and does it hurt

You get the idea. There are things in your business, in every business, other people simply don’t know and are searching for someone to help them.

Gone are the days where you are the town’s accountant and everyone comes to you. With the Internet, the world is your competition. In today’s fast paced business world, people are looking for an expert. They no longer want “a numbers man” but rather a “farm specialist accountant”. By blogging, and sharing your wisdom and knowledge, you are establishing yourself as an expert. The more your customers feel comfortable knowing you understand their problems, the more likely they are to buy from you.

Over time, as your customers realize your business is the solution to their problem, they will begin to share with you other likes, dislikes, and problems they have. With a traditional website, you post a page, some piece of static text, and your prospects come, read it, and move on. With the very nature of a blog, it’s highly conversational. How ? On every “post” you write, there is a section for comments. This allows you gauge what your customers are reading, what they like, what they dislike. Remember the account, if he got 1 comment on “What’s a Mutual Fund” and 350 comments on “Will I have enough at retirement”, the accountant knows what is a major concern of their customers. From that, reply to the comment and schedule a few more posts

So without any further to do, let’s start blogging !