Blogging to Build Your Business

When I left off yesterday I had told you about an organization called Pagan Packs that I had signed up for in hopes of finding more tools to help me with reaching my goals for the two organizations that I run as well as my business.  I’m working through those tools now.  One of the tools that someone posted about on the Pagan Packs forum is something called the Ultimate Blog Challenge.  

The UltimateBlog Challenge is a challenge you sign up for that challenges you to post 31 blog entries during a 31 day month.  (I’m not sure if the challenge changes to 30 posts in a 30 day month or not).  Once you sign up, you are then expected to not only post your blog entries but begin to tweet and share your blog as well as read, comment and share other blog entries by other contestants.  The idea is that the accountability helps you get your blog entries up there and the sharing helps you all promote your blogs so that you get more traffic, more followers and better results from your blog.  There are also tons of articles and suggestions on how to maximize the effects of your blog contributed by the organizers of this challenge as well as by other contestants.  

I signed up for this challenge and have started reading through the material provided.  I’m going to share some of the information I’ve found while researching blogs below. 

The first question I always hear is “Why do I need a blog?”  From all the research I’ve been doing into the people that are successful at running these businesses I’ve noticed there is almost always a blogger attached somehow.  The internet has significantly changed the way people do business.  A few years ago I was more apt to listen to sales people to try and find out information on a product I was interested in.  Now, my first action is to go to my search engines and look for articles or reviews on the product.  If there is a blog about a product or by a business owner, I read it.  A blog can be your best marketing tool whether you are promoting your services, your product, your store, your music, your art, your craft or yourself. 

Let’s say you are a musician that doesn’t have a contract with some recording company that has its own marketing engine promoting your music.  Then you are not only the artist, but the manager, promoter, road crew, and every other hat that needs to be worn to keep your business growing.  So you need to create a relationship with your fans that will get them helping you promote your music.  Start a blog.  Share the blog on your social networking sites and your email list with your fans.  If you are saying interesting things they will be sharing it with their friends and you will gain fans.

Okay, not a musician?  What about an online retailer?  A blog that gives interesting little tidbits about different products or about events you’re going to will catch people’s interest and have them looking for you at these events.  Building a relationship with your customers has them thinking of you first when they are looking to purchase a gift.

If you’re product is yourself then that is more reason to build a relationship with people.  Blog about interesting topics to give them a sample of what you would speak about at their event.  Show off some!