Why you should be blogging

Blogs are becoming a default tools in the marketers armoury. This blog takes a look at the why and how of blogging?

What is a blog

Blogs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from the world reknown Huffington Post to this one!

Technically a blog is a series of articles published in a linear, date driven format (like a ships log but on the web). This format works for relatively small volumes of material, but if you are publishing numerous articles everyday, it becomes unusable. Introduce navigation and search and technically it ceases to be a blog, whatever you call it.

So that definition isn't very helpful.

I prefer to define a blog by the nature of the content: it's tone is informal; it usually follows a theme; it's often opinion rather than fact based and can be rhetorical.

For me, this approach defines a collection of pieces as a blog, whatever you call it. And remember that it is not restricted to copy, video blogs are on the increase for example.

So my definition of a blog is: "A collection of informal, themed pieces of content designed to engage and give insight to the reader."

Why are blogs useful?

The nature of a blog makes it an ideal way to generate rich content. By rich I mean content that:

• engages your audience
• demonstrates your knowledge and expertise in a subject area
• informs your visitors about your activities, products and services (directly or indirectly, depending on the slant you take)
• is good search engine food (rich in keywords)
• keeps your site interesting
• keeps your site fresh

A great marketing tool

The list above is justification for a blog, but if you want more ...

eMarketer senior analyst Paul Verna says, "Studies have shown that marketers perceive blogs to have the highest value of any social media in driving site traffic, brand awareness, lead generation and sales—as well as improving customer service." (More...)

The stats also back this up: more than 50% of web users read blogs (more) and 43% of US companies will be blogging by 2012 (more).

What's involved

That blogs can be informal, unstructured, opinionated and rhetorical, means that it is quicker and easier to generate content than in other formats: an article or whitepaper must be a complete and polished document!

This lowers the time commitment, as the focus is on the idea rather than on the delivery. Whilst we wouldn't advocate slovenly work, we would suggest the tone and flow should be more "natural" that formal.

How to get started

Many people are worried about writing a blog. They are concerned that it will not be polished and won't answer the important questions. But as I've said above, that's not what blogs are about.

Certainly you need to work out why you are writing your blog, but what you should write about, and the approach you take, might not be obvious from the outset.

My advice is to remember what a blog is, a series of loosely connected ideas put down in writing, and to just start one in private.

Define your objective. Decide on your theme. Set up a free account on blogger or WordPress, and get writing. (No-one will read it unless you tell them to.) Get a feel for it. Experiment. Find out what you like to write about. Develop a theme and a tone. After a few goes, you'll start to feel confident, your themes and ideas with become clear and you will see the value in what you write.

Once you can see what value you have to offer, reflect on what value it brings to your target audience and how it will help you to achieve your objectives. Invite some friendly criticism. Feed this reflection back to the creative process.

Once you get there, then you can take it where you like. Watch out the Huffington Post!

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Published by: Mr Tom Barnes

Published 28th September, 2010

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