Is a Business Blog Right for Your Company?

Ray Guluck recently put up a useful post on Social media Today, What Kinds of Businesses Can Benefit from Blogging? He asks three questions and I agree with all of them. Below I repeat them in his words followed by some of my comments.

Are your customers searching online for your products/services? This goes way beyond low-ticket consumer items. A recent survey by Tech Target asked the question. “In the past three months, which of the following information sources have you looked to for information on a new product or technology that your company is potentially going to acquire or implement?” It yielded these top four results: Search Engines—66%, IT Publishers – Websites—58%, IT Vendor Websites—50%, IT Newsletters—41%. Blogs play to the number one source, so by increasing the effectiveness of the blogs and taking more of your content into a blog format you can be a better player in the top two sources. So recommenders, influencers, and even buyers look to the web for information on high ticket IT items.

Is there expertise or a knowledge base that you could share, and is it knowledge or expertise that your customers would find useful? Many firms already have much of the content for a blog. They just need to fit it into this channel. But they need to make sure they are more conversational and not simply giving out PR materials.

Do you like your customers? If you do not like your customers you should not be in business. But the point here is whether you also like to communicate with them. Which should also be a prerequisite.

Ray asks if there are any other questions. I would add:

Do you like to write?

Can you make the commitment for a consistent publishing rate?

Can you be open, spontaneous, and informal in your communication?

Do you want to add others?

Comments

[Craig Underwood]

Bill. Great post. One question I would add is "If you were able to have a weekly call with your major customers or prospects, would you be able to share something of value with them almost every week?" When I was CEO of The Loyalty Group, the CEOs/Presidents of our advertising and other agencies often asked me to dinner. Given the demands of running a high growth company, my family and other passions, I adopted a "one opportunity" rule. I would agree to have dinner the first time, but if I didn't leave the dinner with one new insight or idea that could potentially move our business forward or make me a better leader, I would politely decline all future requests.

Also, a couple of small typos. Add "put" before "up" in the first line and "of" before "the content" in the 10th.

[bill Ives]

Craig - nice addition and thanks for the typo catches. People will also not come back to a business blog if it does not follow your rule and provide something of value.