An Eye-opener on Attitudes to Business Blogging
Here’s a paradox.
When I speak to business owners about incorporating a blog or blogs in their social media strategy the response is, at best, polite but unengaged listening.
That contrasts with the often quite animated discussions I get into about Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn (rarely YouTube, Google+ or Pinterest, Instagram etc).
But according to Michael Stelzner’s recently released Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2014, blogging holds the top spot for future social media marketing plans.
More so for B2B companies but also for B2C.
According to the report, 68% of marketers plan on increasing their use of blogging, as compared with 67% for YouTube and Twitter, and 64% for LinkedIn and Facebook, in that order.
What that says to me is, in part, that many of the business owners I talk to are missing out on a potentially valuable element of a social media strategy.
The coach/educator in me immediately wants to be able to do something about that.
To tell the story more powerfully, so that they might look again and at least consider the possibilities.
I’m ready to evangelize, if you will. After all, in years gone by I described what I did as being a blogging evangelist. 
Developing the value proposition
I know that there is limited potential for evangelism in just quoting those percentages above to business owners. For a start, many business owners would not really know what a blog is, or else – especially if they have some idea but basically think of blogs as a very personal thing (the legitimate but limited “online diary” concept) – they might not see what blogging has to do with their business.
But those figures from the report tell me that some presumably smart marketers have worked out that there is value to be gained from establishing and developing a company blog or blogs. So I will use the percentages, but by no means as a standalone or even seriously persuasive argument.
Because I know from experience that the business benefits from blogging need to be spelled out in plain language, as free as possible of any blogging jargon.
In a blog post last year on another site I listed and explained the following five business benefits for having a corporate or business blog.
- More effective inbound marketing
- Better search engine results
- Thought leadership
- Increased engagement with customers and prospects
- Social media integration
Although I wrote something in that blog post about each of those benefits, I’m thinking now that each could do with a fresh post of its own.
A series.
In saying that, I have to confess I’m wary of promising a series: I’ve done so before on one or another topic and “life got in the way” before I completed it.
But I’m excited about that finding from the Social Media Marketing Industry study and am keen to explore ways in which the value of blogging may be communicated effectively to business owners.
So that’s a kind of a promise of a series on how blogging can be valuable for a business.
If you have any questions about business blogging, or experiences – positive or negative – to share, please use the comments section below. I’d love to get some input for that tentatively promised series!
And if you would like to have on a more private basis a no-obligation chat about how a blog might benefit your particular business, please get in touch with me via the Contact page. I’ll be happy to arrange a time for a phone or Skype conversation. No strings!
Image credit: Blog, by xioubin low via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0
