Its hard to pick up a business magazine and not see something about blogs. But what are the real advantages (and disadvantages) for a company to consider before deciding whether or not blogging is for them?
- Visibility – Blogs are one of the simplest, most-effective means for adding new content to a website. Even if your company writes a blog post once a month, that’s 12 new pages of content that search engines can find. Bumping up the schedule to a weekly blog post would mean 52 high-quality, on-topic content pages added to your site per year. On top of the new content, search engines tend to favor websites that pro-actively add new and unique content to their site. And a blog does just that.
- Credibility – Done properly, a blog can be a huge boost to your company’s credibility. Writing honest, thoughtful feedback on recent industry issues and news presents your company as an authority within the industry. By communicating the value of your company’s thoughts in your blog, you also are communicating the value of your products and services to your customers.
- Conversation – Blogs inherently foster conversation with their conversational tone and frequent updates. In essence, your company is beginning a conversation with each blog post that you write. Then (hopefully) readers comment on the posts and the conversation begins. Creating this sort of natural exchange of thoughts and ideas with you customers is a rare opportunity to begin the conversation without needed to “sell” anything. Just let the conversation start…sales tend to follow.
On the flip side, the only real disadvantage to having a company blog is that it takes a great deal of time and effort. However, if you can’t find time to market your business then you probably won’t have a business for long, so get blogging.