First off, a blog is just a tool, and nothing more, nothing less. That said, it can be a powerful tool to:

    • Position your company as a leader in the industry.
  • Position yourself as a credible thought leader
  • Become the center of your online marketing and social media
  • Communicate regularly with your customers and prospects
  • Make sure you are found for the right keywords in search engines
  • Develop earned media from customers and industry influencers

But realistically, blogs are not for everyone. Blogs are pointless to use unless:

  • You blog consistently. Every piece of content is a promise to your customers. If you start and stop blogging, it’s not a great sign to them. They’ll stop paying attention.
  • You don’t talk about yourself. Your readers don’t care about you…they care about themselves. They will spread around great content that positively affects their lives and careers or makes them think. That latest blog post about your winning an award doesn’t mean much to anyone except you.
  • You keep search in mind. We work with a number of clients on their blogs, and the analytics don’t lie: the majority of traffic to blogs comes from search. Every blog post should have a main keyword as the focus…one that solves a problem for your customers and something that your customers are actually looking for.
  • You think about a call to action. About 80% of the people who find your blog will never be back. That means that each post should have a goal to do something (download a tool kit or white paper or direct the reader to other relevant posts, etc.). What we really want are engaged visitors (engaged visitors view at least three pages or more). It’s important to think about a call to action that drives business, which may be as simple as clicking through to another pate of your great content. Most businesses don’t think about this at all. If you do, you’ll change the way you create content.
  • You share. Telling important stories is only one part of it. In order to make the whole thing work, you need others to share content as well. That means you have to share. Be democratic. One way conversations are awfully silent.

We’ve tried to take these into consideration at the Content Marketing Institute, but don’t take our word for it…just look at blogs such as Copyblogger.com or Social Media Examiner. These are individuals who focused on real customer challenges through their blogs and now have multi-million dollar businesses. And yes, it all started with a blog.

To sum up, think of yourself as if you were a media company with your blog. Thinking like a publisher is the mindset you need to take before you even start a blog. After all, much of the marketing going on today is, in fact, publishing.

Who knew?