Plenty of people will tell you blogging is a waste of time because they can’t track or haven’t realized any sales conversions from blogging. Some will even tell you why blogging is bad. And I agree with them that blogging is bad, but for these main reasons:
- You aren’t posting any relevant information to your customers and prospects
- Your viewers aren’t learning anything they don’t already know
- You aren’t engaging with your audience after they respond to a post
- Your not posting often enough each month
- Your posts aren’t optimized to be found by search engines
Increasingly, there are ‘blogging companies’ that just post messages. The messages are poorly written, include improper English, aren’t optimized for search engines, and worst of all aren’t original. The reason why blogging is bad is that it’s bad blogging. I learned this the hard way while selling for a company that pretended to offer a valuable service but really cared more about racking up accounts than serving them.
Blogging is good because it allows you to establish yourself as the authority in your field. But it has to be well written, follow certain guidelines, and be original. In today’s world of big box retailers and selling on price instead of value many businesses choose to take shortcuts with social media, marketing, and advertising. The ones that invest in their brand by managing it online are the ones that stand out.
Think about it. You want to read good content and you search it out online. If you like it then you share it through your networks to your friends and associates. And when enough others share that content it goes viral. Many companies have unrealistic ideas about growing sales through social media posting. Just because you have a company Facebook account and your posting to it regularly rarely leads to instant followers and new business overnight. Unless you sell topical themed merchandise specific to something happening in the news cycle today you’re going to have to build your ‘followers’ the old fashioned way; you’ll have to earn them. You earn these ‘Followers’, ‘subscribers’ and ‘Likes’ with a message that’s on point with your target audience. You’ll know if it’s on point when your followers share it. For companies that get it, blogging is a very effective tool to convert new visitors to new customers. But it doesn’t happen overnight. So blogging is only really bad if it’s bad blogging.
