Blogging for individuals and small businesses: Part 1 - Why

Professional individuals such as Realtors (TM), contractors, freelancers, financial advisers, insurance salesmen, consultants, writers, composers, teachers, sport stars, researchers, actors, musicians and artists alike, among others, usually need to take care of growing their own business (by growing, I don't necessarily mean obtaining a financial improvement but rather achieving a measurable improvement towards reaching their goals and objectives).

This is the foundation to this series. I'm writing to you, the ambitious professional or small business owner who wants to get to the next level but has limited resources to get there.

I strongly believe focusing on your Marketing activities is the best, natural way to achieve this. Wikipedia makes freely available different Marketing definitions which should help backing up my point. For example, let's take this one:

...Marketing, as suggested by the American Marketing Association, is "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders"

This is kind of a traditional definition. For individuals and small businesses, a fresher approach like that of relationship marketing fits better. Again, from Wikipedia:

...On the other hand, Christian Grönroos, in the context of a move to relationship marketing, summarized a rather different European view in his definition: "Marketing is to establish, maintain and enhance long-term customer relationships at a profit, so that the objectives of the parties involved are met. This is done by mutual exchange and fulfillment of promises"

I've supposed above that your resources are limited. If that's the case, then implementing successful marketing campaigns can be pretty challenging. This is when Technology comes into place. I believe blogging is today's ultimate tool for you to implement a good part of your marketing activities. Some of the reasons are:

• It is a great channel to communicate with your potential and existing customers. It allows them to better understand your business and interact with your network (feel part of it).

  
  

• It is very inexpensive.

  
  

• It is simple and fast: allows you to have that quick reactivity your contacts expect from you and also differentiates you from the slower and bureaucratic big guys.

  
  

• Freely sharing your content makes you an authority on your subject. It helps you differentiate from your competition and clearly define your value proposition.

  
  

• It allows you to reach a global audience and leverage on existing social networks (read propagate buzz) that you might have not even though about.

  
  

• It is also a great way to create exposure to other important people, such as existing and potential partners, angel and venture capital investors, the press, team members and future employees, associates, etc.

  
  

• It is flexible: for example, if a given article doesn't work out well then you don't need to continue writing on it, or you may even choose to edit it (compare this to an expensive ad campaign)

  
  

• It helps you leverage on freely available and existing technology. The technology behind blogs makes them the perfect networking tool. Pings, tracebacks, comments, feeds and sites like boing boing illustrate this (more about the technology will come later on the next parts).

  
  

• It connects you with the early adopters. They love blogs. Connecting with them is one of the keys to your success (mostly if you are offering products to the end consumers).

  
  

• If you have great content and keep updating your blog regularly, your audience (read prospects, customers, potential partners, etc) will keep growing and coming back again and again.

  
  

• It helps you building your brand. Think Nike (more about this later).




• Because of the informal nature of blogs, they allow you to be more relaxed on your writing style. You are suddenly more human, have emotions and feelings. This will help you reach and connect with your audience on a more intense and personal level than, for example, the one achieved by a white paper, a press article or even by a traditional website.

OK, that was long. I'd be surprised if you are still with me. In any case, I would like to hear from you . Thanks for reading!