About the Author - Flywheel

Will Franco is the Founder and CEO of jiveSYSTEMS, a video email and web video marketing system. He is also an internet marketing consultant and marketing automation coach. His personal mantra is, "Think-Automate: Do it, Automate it, Delegate it, or Ditch it" He regularly writes posts in the jiveSYSTEMS Blog on a variety of business topics. In addition, he has two personal blogs, one that he calls his business notebook, and one that he calls his personal journal, where he writes about his adventures into the quantum realm and the meaning of life.

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5 Major Reasons You Should Start Blogging

September 2nd, 2009 by Flywheel • Filed Under

There are many reasons you should start a blog. Since I don’t know what business you are in, I am going to stick to the major overall benefits of blogging. I have been blogging for only a few short years. Since deploying the jiveSYSTEMS Blog last December, I have learned a tremendous amount. For those of you who are bloggers, we have a bounce rate of less than 20%. Our site has an Alexa rank of 131,323 which is in the top 0.47 % of all sites on web. This blog currently has a Technorati rank of 1,605,221, which puts it in the top 2.29% of blogs tracked by Technorati. Granted these may not be impressive stats in comparison to power bloggers like Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki, and others. But I feel they are a modest achievement, for a guy with a laptop that barely passed English class in school. And these stats are going to improve, now that we have started to promote this blog. What I am aiming to say is “If I can do it, you can too!”

So here it goes, below I have listed the 5 major reasons you should start a blog:

Create and Sustain a Conversation about Your Business
In my opinion, blogging is the single most beneficial thing you can do to promote your business online. This is because websites, squeeze pages, and landing pages cannot create and sustain a relationship with your prospects and clients; whereas a Blog can.

Improve Your Ranking in Search Engine Results
Everyone wants to know the magic recipe for search engine domination. While I do not claim to know the complete formula, I do know several strategies that will improve your ranking in the search engines. Each post you write creates an indexed page on your site. The more indexed pages your site has, the higher you will rank in the search engine. The next step is creating lots of quality backlinks to your pages.

Nurture Relationships
The key to selling is teaching. A blog is the perfect place to nurture relationships. You need to educate your prospects on the value of your products and services. The same holds true for your customers. Also, when your prospects and customers can find the information they need online, they will call and email your customer support team less frequently. This will improve the overall profitability of your company.

Refine Your Thoughts
Writing helps you refine your thoughts. Marketing and sales are all about communicating. Sales are the result of your prospects resonating with your message. Sure, you can hire a copywriter, but they are rarely tapped into the pulse of your business, as intimately as you are. Now, I am not saying you need to write all your copy and blog posts. You can merely provide the foundation. For the past year, I have been consistently writing one article per day. It used to take me 2 to 3 hours to write a post like this. Now I can do it in less than 60 minutes. It is definitely time well spent.

Advertise Your Business for Free
Corporations and small business alike spend a lot of money advertising. An ever growing percentage of their budget is being spent on banner advertising online. You can advertise your products and services in banner spots on your blog. This strategy can bring new business to your door and facilitate up-sells as well. For those of you who are a little more adventurous, your banner spots could also be used for cross-promotion and affiliate relationships.

Every business should have a blog. The sooner you deploy one the better. A blog will not only help your business grow, it will help you grow as well.

Do you have a blog? If you do, please take a moment to share with our readers some of the ways your blog has helped you. Please feel free to leave a comment with a question about blogging and I will reply with the answer promptly. After all, I am here to serve you.

View Comments »

Comment by Flywheel aka Ortonom on September 3, 2009:

Gladly! Please elaborate on 'connect it to other places' and I will.
Comment by Linda Eisenberg on September 3, 2009:

I am not very internet savy but we are trying to be visible out there. I am new to blogging. I started a blog on Blogger.com, but I do not know how to connect it to other places…could you please advise?
Comment by Sandra Brown on September 3, 2009:

Thanks for the info! I've never "blogged" before but have realized within the past couple of days that I need to get started if I plan on making my business a success.

Keep up the good work!
Comment by Flywheel aka Ortonom on September 3, 2009:

Thanks for the insightful comment. If you use the WordPress.org engine, you may find some useful ideas for plugins in my eBook. It's called how to create and sustain a global conversation about your products and services.
Comment by Phil Hughes on September 3, 2009:

Great post!

I completely agree about the value of blogging, and I’ll add podcasting to that list as well. There is literally nothing that can produce the kind of organic traffic and loyalty in followers that a good blog and/or podcast can.

I’ve been online as a blogger and podcaster in a small way since February and find my posts and videos picked up by Google sometimes in a matter of minutes. This is a big boost to my traffic as I have new members in my free courses online everyday…without a penny of paid traffic.

I also love to write and focusing my efforts on content inside my blog and then directing my email, twitter, facebook followers to go there is a great exercise in writing and time management to boot! Now I just write ONE message and invite everyone over to my place to see it.

Cuts down on spam complaints (why can’t people just unsubscribe…sigh) and gives me a chance to offer more than email spam filters make possible these days. It also increases conversions…

So, way to go on a great post!

Phil Hughes
Comment by Steve Davidson on September 4, 2009:

I certainly agree with everything you said here. We add 3-4 pages a week to our website via our blog, focusing on keyword content and it is definitely helping our rankings, but we have few if any followers. We have previously sold largely to fortune 500 type companies and are changing our business model to SMB's, which I think will give us a larger audience for blog. But what resources other than Digg and Squidoo might we post articles to that would drive traffic or readers to our blog?

2nd Question: If we post an article on the blog, then post it somewhere like Digg to achieve interest, how much damage do the two identical articles do to our keyword rank?

Thanks for your great blog, good job!
Comment by Tim on September 4, 2009:

Great article…lots to agree with htere. My blog at tradeshowguyblog.com has given me a platform to post fun stuff, informative articles, post podcast interviews with industry vets and newbies, promote two e-books and generally have a good time. It also impresses people (well, people who are easily impressed anyway!), so that has to be a good thing.
Comment by Fay Jackson on September 7, 2009:

Hi I would like to start a blog but have no idea how to even begin. Can you please advise me. Thanks
Comment by Flywheel aka Ortonom on September 7, 2009:

One of my partners (Benji Rabhan) will be sending you some more information about blogging.
Comment by Flywheel aka Ortonom on September 8, 2009:

LinkedIn groups will be a goldmine for you! Join relevant groups and then publish your articles in the news feeds of your groups. I use the Shareaholic plugin to bookmark all my posts across all the major bookmarking and news feed sites.

You will also find some great plugins for your Blog, if you are using WordPress.org, in this eBook.

Posting to sites like Digg doesn't do any damage to speak of as far as keyword rank is concerned [as far as I know]. This is because you are not submitting the entire article. Also, even though Digg and the other sites are nofollow links [they don't pass linkjuice], they do help your rank in the search engines. This is a relatively new discovery I made. So bookmark away!
Comment by Flywheel aka Ortonom on October 16, 2009:

It would be my pleasure. Keep an eye in your inbox next month for the post. Also, thanks for attending our Webinar in June.
Comment by Thomas Kersten on October 16, 2009:

I am just starting out and have to admit that I am a computer dinosauar!
Would it be possible for you to put out something that would equate to Blogging for dummies?
Comment by Trevor on November 7, 2009:

You made some good points on this topic.