Why blog? The most obvious reason, for me, is to express thought leadership.
What are you an expert at? Everyone has some expertise to share customers, which leads to being seen as a thought leader in that area.
For me, I’m not a thought leader in anything specifically, but I care a lot about women in small business and providing them with tools to use. So, my blogging tends to be focused on books, articles and other information useful to small business owners.
Ask yourself: How can I benefit my tribe or my community with my expertise?
Yesterday, I was speaking to an author who sold 70,000 copies of her first book, and is now on her second book. She said, “The publisher has done a lousy job on the second book. They’ve sold only 3,000 copies. What can I do?”
Now, for some of you who self-publish, you probably know that 3,000 is actually quite a lot of books to move; nonetheless, she wasn’t happy with that. She was looking for a solution to her publishing problems. I’ve published a number of best-sellers, including Rich Dad Poor Dad (which some of you have heard of), so I understand publishing.
“What’s important about getting the book out?” I asked the author.
She said, “Well, I want to get it into as many hands as possible.”
“Well, why don’t you make it free?” I asked.
She reacted as if this were the most ridiculous suggestion ever. I said, “Don’t worry about the profit you would make on your book. If your goal is to get the book in as many hands as possible, turn it into a free eBook. You could even split it up into blog posts.”
But she’s not ready to go there. It’s great to walk into a bookstore and see something you’ve created, but if your main goal is to become a thought leader, there are other ways of getting your ideas in front of more people.
Few people make money from blogging alone, but blogging increases profit by driving traffic to your website.
And if the blog gets enough traffic, you can then sell online advertising spaces on the blog itself as an additional revenue stream. However, my primary reason for blogging is to send out information I’m already creating.
I was recently listening to the audio book version of Crush It! (some of you may have heard of it) by blogger Gary Vaynerchuk, who has a daily video blog about wine. So, yes, he’s a wine lover, yes, he knows his wine, but his blog is as much about his passion for life and business as it is about wine.
He was talking about the thank you economy. He said, “A lot of what we do on social media — what we generate is goodwill and that people will buy for us, will do business with us as a way of saying thank you for the value that we provide them through these resources,” and I think a blog is a way to do that.
My blog is called HerBusinessBlog.com. When I built it, I built it at a separate domain from the main ABN website, but to enhance search engine optimisation reasons, I’ve moved it to our main site. The blog includes an opt-in box, where visitors can opt-in to get a free copy of the 30 days of Networking eBook.
Now, why am I doing that?
First, it’s a way of re-purposing some content. I have thirty lessons on how to network. It’s a way to collect a name, a last name and an email address and build a list of people who are interested in information I can provide.
Whenever we highlight a useful article on our website or in our newsletter, I’ll post a link to it from the blog. I don’t always create original content for the blog; it allows me to repurpose and promote the content we already have.
I love how a blog can integrate different forms of media. For example, my blog integrates with my Flickr photo account, and of course you can post videos on a blog as well. We feed all of our YouTube videos through the blog, and my Twitter account feeds into the blog as well.
We also have an area on the blog where we highlight some of our members. If one of our members wins an award or makes the news, we include it here. Then the individual will typically blog and tweet about it, and that generates more leads to our blog.
I don’t blog just for the sake of blogging. I have no reason to add one more task to my to-do list. I’m very, very busy, but I blog because it supports all of our other marketing activities.
