Why Blog Why.

By Nicole Fletcher

Clients often ask me why they should blog.”I’m an accountant/lawyer/clothing store/Insert brand here,” they say, “What could I possibly blog about and why would I waste my time?” Well friends/clients/future bloggers I’m here to give you the low down, the 411, the how to and the why.

Blogs offer brands from startups to corporate giants the opportunity to flex their creative muscles, to ruffle their feathers, if you will. The voice behind the business gives your brand a personality and human-like qualities, which clients, customers and future business people love. Consumers want to support brands they can relate to, brands that they feel comfortable with, brands they might consider friends. After all, who better to do business with or help you when you’re in need than a real live living and breathing human?

Back to the point: Why you should blog and how you should do it.

Step 1. Have a plan. Know how your voice is going to sound in both the blogger and the social sphere. These voices must be consistent as they are both integral parts of your social media marketing strategy.

Step 2. What are you going to post? Know what ‘vibe’ you want to give off. Will you post videos, pictures, quotes, articles or all of the above? Make sure you’re having fun while you’re posting and that you would want to read your posts yourself! If you don’t find what you’re posting interesting and you ARE your brand, how can you expect anyone else to? Feel free to post brand/industry related information like event recaps, invites, updates, innovations, pics etc, but make sure not to be purely self promotional – customers don’t want to hear you talk about how awesome you are. Sorry.

Step 3. Make Time. Blogging is fun. Post fun things, write what you think, look for unanswered questions, inspire conversation.

Step 4. Don’t be afraid to link back to yourself. Pick keyword phrases in your content that are industry related (ie: what you think people would be searching for to find your company website – Places to Stay in San Diego for a San Diego Hotel for example) and link those back to your website. This will do wonders for your SEO (search engine optimization)- driving traffic to your website and increasing your brand visibility.

Step 5. Push your blog posts our to your social networks. If you don’t already have social networks in place, well that’s another conversation entirely (email me Nicole@jacobtyler.com) but if you do, link to them, tweet about them, ask people what they think and perhaps consider implementing an internal social media policy – thereby inspiring your employees to really invest in the brand and get the word out there. Remember: It’s easy to bring already established communities into your own community than it is to create them from scratch.

In a nut shell, blogging is fun! If you need help setting one up, I’d be happy to help- but if you feel confident, check out wordpress or tumblr- two awesome blogging platforms created for you blogging pleasure.

Here’s to blogging, blogs and being a blogger.