We all know blogging is becoming more and more popular so why should we get involved? I know everyone will have their own reasons in their own order of importance but here are a few you should consider.- Express Your Thoughts - Blogging is a perfect medium for this. Typing out your thoughts at the time, will bring structure and clarify to your ideas. There is plenty of scope to flesh them out.
- Share Your Thoughts - Having written a blog post it is easy to share it though the use of social media be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Reddit.
- Get FeedBack - By allowing others to comment on your blog or website you connect with the wider community and invite feedback on your ideas.
By sticking to a common theme you can share your passion, interest and expertise in a particular subject matter. This is often referred to as niche blogging. Niche blogging has many business advantages. It allows you to
- Raise Your Personal Profile - Blogging is definitely a way of standing out from the crowd, gathering a crowd around you and delivery your personal message to that crowd. While more and more people are doing this, it is not for everyone. Its worth mentioning that the marketing guru Seth Godin started off by blogging. His first book was a collection of his first blog posts.
- Raise Your Brand - Be it your personal brand or your comany brand, it will be elevated through association with a blog. Even if you are blogging just to be heard your blog will become your brand. All the more reason to keep your blog consistant or to a theme.
- Show That You Are Human - A blog allows the writer and his followers to express their opinions and will bring across the humanity of those involved rather than just a corporate image. Emotion is convincing and builds long term loyalty.
- Show Your Expertise - Again by sticking to a niche area you can demonstrate the depth of your knowledge on the subject matter. The first question you will have to answer is "how much expertise should I share"? You may want to test the water. Many argue that in today's world where you can google anything, that information has no real value but its implimentation does. This means that you give information away freely but charge for the strategizing and application of your intellectual propertery. Depending on your business model you may have varying views on this. Either way sharing your expertise will establish you as an authority in your field. In many cases demonstrating your expertise will automatically raise your personal and/or band profile.
- Position Yourself - Your blog will show both your point of view and your strengths within a given niche. This will automatically position you, show how you are different, relative to others in your field.
- Influence Others - Having established that you are a credible expert and that you have a position or point of view on why things in your industry are the way they are or where they are going, it becomes easy to influence your followers.
- Drive Traffic - My recent experence is that blogging literally forces you to drive traffic to your site. After all you want to be heard, don't you?
