Oct 17 2007
Should I be Blogging?
Should I be Blogging?
The last time we talked, it was about one of the most commonly asked questions I get: What is a blog? Now, we’re going to talk a little bit about the second most common question people ask me: Should I be blogging?
Well, that depends.
A lot of people are out there blogging right now. Technorati says it’s something like 71 million. With 71 million blogs out there, there has to be someone reading those blogs, right?
According to a study done by comScore, Six Apart, and Gawker Media, nearly 50 million Internet users were out there reading blog sites during the first quarter of 2005. That’s about 30 percent of all Internet users and shows a lot of potential readership for the next great voice in the blogosphere.
That same study did a little bit of a breakdown on the types of blogs people are reading. 43 percent of online blog readers visit political/news blogs followed in popularity by lifestyle blogs, tech blogs, and blogs by women.
Furthermore, blog readers were “significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high speed connections.” They also “visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and they are more likely to shop online.”
On top of all of that, blog readership is increasing. This means there are more people out there looking for things of interest to them and if you have a distinctive message to get out there, now is the time to do it.
For the purposes of this piece, I’m going to assume you are wondering if a blog could help your business.
The short answer is ‘yes - it can help’. Business related blogs are sweeping through every industry as people realize the potential benefits.
- Most blog software is easy to use. They generally use a WYSIWYG editor - WYSIWYG means “what you see is what you get” - it’s basically no different from any other rich text editor (like MS Word or an email client like Thunderbird or Outlook) that you’ve used before, which means the learning curve is next to nothing if you are already used to opening up something like Word and typing away.
- A blog lets you quickly and easily inform people about yourself, your business, your products and services, your likes and dislikes, so on and etc.
- Blogs are really easy to maintain and update, unlike a lot of website solutions out there. If you want to create a new post or talk about something you heard about on the drive into work, all you have to do is login and type - no need to contact your web developer or IT dept.
- Blogs are about community building. Through your blog, you are putting your voice out there to the public and initiating a dialogue.
I am not saying that a blog can or should replace a company website, but it can be a valuable addition to any such site. If you don’t have a company website, a blog can be a relatively inexpensive way of creating an Internet presence quickly. Most blog software is ready and willing to be SEO compliant - which means that the search engines like Google will be able to index the blog pretty quickly, gaining you page rank that you can build on over time.
So, if you want to blog, there are (most likely) folks out there who would love to hear what you have to say.
Next time we’ll talk about “How do I start a blog?”