Blogging serves the five main web marketing components of credibility, usability, visibility, sellability, and scalability. The architecture of blogging platform technology makes content organization simple, creating strong user experience. The coding of blogs is clean, allowing for frequent content publishing and building in a lot of links, which boosts search visibility. Overall, a well-managed blog can create connections, share information, increase visibility, and boost sales. The potential for blogs to scale up with more and more content is endless.
The number of blogs in the world is growing at a speed that is almost too fast to track in real time. The orders of magnitude are mind-boggling. It is safe to say that worldwide blogs number in the hundreds of millions, with hundreds of thousands being started every day. With millions of posts hitting every day, blogs have become a primary news source for the vast majority of Internet users.
Customers crave a point of view. Buyers are using the World Wide Web to research and find products, services, and information. A resourceful blog becomes a force in visibility, credibility, sellability, and scalability. Blogs educate, get found easily in search engines, and allow for conversation in an asynchronous way, often working to support organizations 24 hours a day. Sharing a point of view helps people help themselves, and some organizations can’t ever anticipate what it will do for business in the process.
That said, blogging is not worth doing unless you have:
– Something valuable to say
– The tools to blog with (these are easy to find.)
– The ability to create community (just because you build a blog does not mean people will read it.)
– A purpose—a clear reason to blog (and a smart strategy)
– The most important piece: passion
A blogger who blogs for the sake of blogging will not be able to keep the love alive and sustain it as an online marketing solution for the long haul. Blogging isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. Commit to blogging as an online marketing investment to share information, educate, voice values, and engage in ongoing social dialogue. Bloggers blog because they care. Understanding why blogs work and how to create a sound strategy will help ensure that execution is done in a way that is clean, clear, consistent, and conducive to making a meaningful marketing impact.
