Top 10 Reasons You Must Blog For Business In 2006

I was planning on having this article out as a traditional end of year list just like every other blogger was doing in December 05 but instead I’m going to release this now with a slight change of focus. I was to discuss how blogging has changed my life in general, but instead I’m going to give this a business flavour since I think it’s important to distinguish how good blogs are for business.

I know there are a lot of readers of this website that don’t have a blog and if that’s the case for you I urge you to make 2006 the year you get into blogging. It can do wonders for your business, as this list is testament to…

How Blogging Has Changed My Business Life…Or…The Top 10 Reasons You Must Be Blogging In 2006

10. Blogging Encourages You To Create Content

This may seem obvious but until you put it into practice you don’t fully realise how powerful a motivator blogging can be. If you are planning on writing a book or a whitepaper or an course or anything that can be used to promote your business than a blog can be the perfect motivational vehicle for it. Start writing it in chunks each day to a blog post. Even just a 500 word article done once a week will see you produce a 26,000 word book by the end of the year. You kill two birds with one stone using this technique – blog content and a business marketing and promotion tool.

9. Blogging Is Therapy

Many people report that writing about their business can be very therapeutic, helping you to get things off your chest or just enjoy the pleasure of spreading ideas. Of course you don’t want to go around being too blatantly honest on a business blog but often just talking about what you did in the last working day can be some interesting reading. Your thoughts, ideas and opinion are valuable, people deserve to benefit from your expertise don’t they? Why not help others while you help yourself.

8. Blogging Helps You Communicate With Customers

Absolutely everyone (Seth Godin, Cluetrain, et al) is talking about the need for business to establish conversations with customers. Marketing doesn’t work when it’s too corporate or too sales-ey, it works when conversations occur between individuals.

The challenge as presented very eloquently by Hugh Macleod is to:

Blogs are by far one of THE best tools to get close to attaining that power. Blogs present your ideas in a personal manner as if you and your reader are having a one on one chat at the local coffee shop. Sure you may discuss your business but you are not trying to make a sale, you’re just talking about something you love.

7. Blogging Builds Your Network

I have a folder in my email that I place contacts I have made with people directly as a result of blogging. Last year that folder went from 0 to over 100 emails and I didn’t do one thing proactively to open communications besides publish my blog. People contacted me to exchange links, to ask for help or talk about business, or just thank me for my efforts.

In January this year I made it one of my new year’s resolutions to proactively build my network and ever since I’ve had many people from all over the world email me to say hello. I’ve already met a few people in person on my recent trip to Melbourne and I expect later in the year on more travels to meet other people.

6. Blogging Helps You Make Friends (okay, this one isn’t very businessey)

As an adjunct to the above post about networking is a very similar benefit regarding friendship. My policy is to make friends first and maybe do business somewhere down the line (or maybe not) when it comes to networking, but I think it’s important to distinguish the difference between friendship and business networking, although the line can be blurry at times.

It’s amazing to think I can meet new friends all around the world by simply posting on my website that I’ll be visiting a city somewhere soon. Fifteen years ago it simply would not have been possible to communicate on such a global scale. Today it’s available to the average, non-technical person who can write a basic blog entry into blogger.com.

5. Blogging Opens New Markets

It’s probably fair to say that this benefit has more to do with the Internet and it’s global reach than anything in particular that blogging offers, but combined with some of the points I’ve already mentioned you can see how blogging can lead to new customers from around the world where just banging up a standard online brochure wouldn’t be nearly as successful.

Even if you don’t run a blog of your own as Kevin Muoio from IpodMyBaby.com demonstrated, the blogosphere is a powerful global marketing tool.

4. Even Newbies Can Blog

If you have a limited budget, no IT staff or technical expertise yourself and you are planning on online presence then it’s safe for me to say that a blog is a better way to go than an average website. Out of the box your blog will perform better in search engines, be simpler to maintain and have a much easier learning curve than struggling to build a site through something like Dreamweaver.

While some might argue for small business a service like Site Build It is the best way to go, nothing compares to the affordability and simplicity of plain old blogging. It’s like writing emails for the world to read.

3. Blogging Can Make You Money

Darren Rowse certainly helped push along the cause for the professional blogger trade. When he announced he was making over $15,000 in AdSense checks I’m sure a whole troop of new professional bloggers were born and decided they wanted a piece of the action too.

While blogging for a career may not be everyones cup of tea and no doubt some are trying and failing, the fact that through programs like AdSense bloggers have the potential to earn money relatively easily. The only hard job is becoming popular and generating traffic, so if you have the talent to bring in the readers why not make some money too?

2. Blogging Makes You Famous

Ahh, I do love groupies. Who doesn’t! As was recently mentioned to me (let me paraphrase a bit here) -

It’s true, blogging can make you famous. From a business stand point fame and publicity are helpful. They are often synonyms for good old fashion marketing and if you are in business you are always looking for good old fashioned marketing.

1. Blogging Is Fun

You have to end with a bang when you do these lists right? Of course you do! – BANG, here it is – The simple fact is blogging offers all the business benefits mentioned above AND it’s fun.

Writing this article was fun. Waking up tomorrow morning to read the delightful comment you are going to leave me is fun. Seeing if I get any trackbacks and other bloggers posting about my article is fun. Seeing doors open to new business opportunities, new contacts and possibilities to make money and grow as a business person is fun. Best of all, by blogging I’m staying part of the conversation and we all want to be heard.

Start blogging today. Be heard.

Yaro Starak
Blogging Evangelist (sorry Andy, I had to borrow your catchphrase for this one).