In Getting Started With Blogging – Part 1, I offered a piece of advice about making your blog easy to read. Then I asked the question, why are you blogging? I received an email asking me, “What exactly is a blog?” Fair question…
What is a blog?
A blog is a journal of information, typically about a topic or topic area (ie: politics, business, technology, religion). The term blog comes from the term web log. Years gone by, technology companies would post changes to their product in reverse date order. The geeks like me could read these web logs to determine what has changed from version to version. Web log was shortened and became blog.
A blog can contain text only or a combination of images, audio, or video. When a blog is primarily audio or video content, it is referred to as a podcast. You add individual “articles” to your blog or podcast; these are referred to as “blog posts” or “entries”. You will hear the term, “I’ve posted to my blog.” It simply means they added an article.
I cover the topic in a short video here: 5 Minutes to Understanding Blogs and Podcasts
Why Would Anyone Blog?
Blogging has a number of benefits. I’m going to come at this mostly from a business perspective. However, personal blogs offer a way for people to connect on similar areas of interest. For instance, there are many amateur photographers who blog as a way to showcase their work.
In my prior blog entry, I mentioned a few reasons, let’s illuminate.
Showcase Expertise/Share Knowledge
One of the most important reasons for a business owner/entrepreneur to blog is to showcase their expertise.. (hint: it is what I am doing now). By providing good knowledge to your audience, you both educate them (which is good for them) and you demonstrate what you know. If you do so effectively, you gain credibility and trust. This puts you one step closer to being their vendor of choice for products or services related (or marginally related) to your area of expertise.
What do you mean, “marginally related?” I strongly recommend you provide broader knowledge than just your specific expertise. If you sell insurance, don’t blog about insurance everyday. You can touch on business topics, sales, management, lifestyle, etc. If you are a bankruptcy attorney, cover budgeting, money management, personal and business finance, etc.
It’s about the value you are adding to the reader: Also important. I indicate “showcase expertise” as the reason above. However, be careful. It isn’t about “look how great I am at this” or “be awed by my knowledge.” Make sure the focus is on how GREAT you are helping your audience (reader, listener, viewer) become.
Building a Platform
I mention this because I coach some writers and other creative personalities. Publishers want writers with a platform. The strongest platforms are TV and radio. But a well-written and popular blog is also an effective platform. Pam Slim writes the popular “Escape From Cubicle Nation” blog/podcast. The popularity of her website led to a book publishing deal and helps fuel her coaching and speaking business.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines love content; new content and good content. A blog is one of the more effective ways to help people find your website. Without getting into the gory details, when a blog entry is posted, it registers with special servers on the internet that catalog millions of blog entries. The major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Google, and Google) in turn go through these special services and their software reviews the blog entries. Want more details how and why this happens? Another 5 minute tutorial here.
If the content is deemed to be valuable or non-spam content, the search engine will add it to their catalog.
If you use the right keywords, you stand to benefit from natural search engine placement. There is more to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but blogging is a great place to start.
What is natural search engine placement? When you do a search on Google, the first results are often paid advertisements. The results that show up after the first 2 or 3 paid advertisers are the natural results. There are studies that indicate that people are skeptical of the ads and the natural search engine results are viewed more favorably.
A recent report from HubSpot.com indicates that both the quality and quantity of blog entries on a site impact it’s search engine placement. More reason to get started NOW!!!
Personal examples
As of the time of this writing, if you perform the following searches, blog entries from one of my blogs rank toward the top.
“songwriter merchandise” – I actually have my music site, the songwriter online site, and from time to time, an entry from my blog at toolbox.com
“computer consultant ventura” – this was actually a test blog entry mosty for fun. But within 2 weeks my blog entry was showing up in the top 1 or 2 natural results on Google.
“consulting proposal” – A blog entry from 2005 on Toolbox.com still ranks on page 1 of Google and results in hundreds of visits to my blog each month.
Why are you NOT blogging?
I asked the question in part 1, “Why are you blogging?” but the better question, after looking at the above reasons might be, “Why are you NOT blogging?”
I’m not covering the other reasons mentioned in part 1. The two reasons above form the basis for why you should be blogging.
In part 3, I’m going to cover naming your blog and hosting your blog. We’ll discuss hosting (where your blog is found on the web) your blog on an external service like, WordPress.com or blogger.com versus hosting it on your own domain.. ie: yourcompanyname.com
In the meantime, if you have questions or comments, please leave them here or email me at:
info@KreativeKnowledge.com
