Blogging and Getting Your Teeth Drilled
The first time a person writes a blog it’s all excitement and self-expression. By the fifth blog, they’d rather go to the dentist. Blogs are vicious task masters. Because they’re way bigger than a tweet or a Facebook post, we figure each one has to be brilliant, insightful and original. Unlike a one-time magazine article, the blog sits there waiting for you to add to it! Combine these two things and you have a serious case of chronic stress.
Since blogs are so challenging, why do it? Here are a few reasons:
Blogs can make you a subject matter expert –unlike magazine articles where you are required to follow intense editorial rules and requirements, blogs let you be expert, intelligent, and helpful in small bites and in your own voice. Have an opinion? You can voice it. Want to point to your own product as the solution to a problem? You’re allowed.
Blogs are beloved by search engines – they help keep you in front of your customer.
Blogs are social media – despite their potential to enhance expertise, they can be personal and informal in tone. They encourage conversation.
Blogs allow dialog – readers can comment, ask questions and interact. This will happen most if you prompt those questions. Interaction builds brands.
Blogs give a personality to your website – a visitor may read all the product descriptions and “Who we are” sections in the world, but if they want to know what you believe and know, they’ll sample your blog.
So there are lots of pros to blogging. That doesn’t erase the cons. Who has time to do it? That’s where a content expert (like Strategies)comes in! Establish a partnership with a content provider that can dive deep into your company’s markets, products, services, technology and culture, then turn the content provider loose on producing a steady flow of blogs. Yes, you have to check them for accuracy, but with the right partner, that will become a small job. You get the benefits of blogging – and none of the pain of the dentist drill.