Dude, Blog Your Business!

I went to a small business networking meeting this morning – part of the routine for most small businesses. In fact we have been asked to do a presentation on blogging for businesses at another meeting – there is a lot of interest in blogging for businesses. One thing I have noticed at many of these meeting is that you tend to get several people who pursue the same or very similar businesses. Two groups that stand out in this respect are realtors and insurance agents.

Now the question is, if one were looking for a realtor or an insurance agent, which one would you chose. This is a great situation in which to advocate for the business blog. Why? Because you get to ask them what makes their realty or insurance business different from the others. It is not the products particularly, though there may be differences. Ultimately the real difference is the business owner themselves. That is what makes the business ’special’. And that very aspect of their business is the one which blogs are so suited to addressing.

The beauty of blogs is that you can do them yourself – you don’t need to know any computer languages; they build a searchable reference library of knowledge about your business, establishing the business owner as an authority in their industry which, in turn, encourages trust in the reader over a period of time. And, because blogs are less formal than websites, regular posting can let the business owner’s personality shine through. Customers can contact them and ask questions through the comments section – they can join the conversation. And that is essentially why small business owners come to a network meeting in the first place – so potential clients can get to know them. Customers are always more likely to buy from someone they know and trust.

So which one of the realtors or insurance agents is going to attract more leads and convert more of those leads to sales? The one who has invested in a blog of course!

Yes, sad to say – both Dave and I were born of biz op – or “business opportunity” to give it its full title. We met while working for a company that was big on selling the “opportunity” and short on delivering the “business” – standard biz op fare really. But we were both passionate about the potential in blogging as a marketing tool for business, and both had strong ideas on what a proper blog should look like.

Blogging is a conversation. It is a conversation that uses a myriad of media to express an idea – things like text, or audio, or video, or images.
“A picture paints a thousand words” someone famously said. Think, therefore, how many words can be painted if you also converse with audio and video, as well as pictures and words – all in one medium. That is what a blog can do.

The thing about conversations is that they are a two-way process. That is what makes blogging such a leap forward from static web sites – they allow, even encourage, a two-way conversation. Don’t just show your customers what you have got to offer – talk to them about what you have to offer – tell them how great it is and why what you have to offer is so much better than what anyone else has to offer.

Ultimately, the most successful businesses are those that do business with integrity. In the same way a blog will only work if you blog with integrity. That is probably the biggest lesson we learned in working for that other firm – you can’t fake it, it just won’t work. And that is why we will always operate with full integrity on everything we do. One thing you will never get from us is a ‘biz op’.

If you want to know how a blog can work for your business just read our articles at the top of the page, and then give us a call and we’ll see how we can help you make it happen!