Posts tagged business blogging


Five unexpected benefits of blogging

Sep 4th

58 comments

unexpected blogging benefits

I generally focus on the business benefits of social media but a recent conversation with my friend (and uber blogger) Jeff Bullas revealed that we had both received benefits from blogging that reached beyond mere dollars and cents. For both of us, blogging had changed our lives in some unexpected ways.

To provide some balance to the discussion, I thought I would feature some of the benefits that we don’t often talk about on our blog posts:

Blogging heals

… and by this I mean literally physically and psychologically heals. I discovered that both Jeff and I had started to blog at the same time following tragedies in our lives.  During this difficult time, blogging allowed me to connect with people in ways that lifted me out of the darkness. And I found that the act of blogging lowered my blood pressure during a very stressful period. Writing every day was an important part of healing both my mind and body.

Blogging connects

jon buscall

Jon Buscall, a very tall bloke, and I in Stockholm.

I am not the kind of person who has dozens of friends. I have few close friends that I have held onto through the years. Yet so many people on the blog have have become legitimate, close friends in such a short period of time. And not just “Facebook friends” but “come over for dinner friends.”  When I visited Sweden, Jon Buscall was there to greet me and show me around his lovely city of Stockholm. When I landed in Estonia, Kimmo Linkama took the day off to show me around this beautiful country. And when I visit Ireland this month, Ian Cleary will be organizing a celebratory Tweet-up with my new friends in Dublin. How would this have ever happened without blogging?

Blogging defines

Where do you stand on issues in the industry?  Is Facebook on the decline or on the rise?  What is the best way to measure the success of social media programs? What does Google + need to do to break-out? How do you integrate social media with traditional media? How do small businesses find the time to create meaningful content for the web?

Blogging helps you think through these topics and help clarify your — and your business’s positions — on vital industry topics. Blogging gets my mind organized.

Blogging teaches 

And by this I mean, it teaches ME.  Here’s a secret. I rarely have the answers. But I do have some good questions! Many of my blog posts are incomplete. I may be thinking about an idea or a theory that I’m not sure about. So I’ll throw something out there and let the community hash it out. I learn something from the community every day and I’ve incorporated these learnings into my classroom teaching, future blog posts, and even my books.

Blogging Inspires

{grow} regular Billy Delaney ans Social Slam 2012

{grow} regular Billy Delaney speaking at Social Slam 2012

Two years ago, we had our first Social Slam conference in Knoxville, TN.  It was basically a gathering of the {grow} community and hundreds of the people who have come to know each other through the blog made the pilgrimage.  They came from every corner of the country and overcame many difficulties to get here. They wanted to meet each other, these new connections and friends. I’ve had a great career but this was a real highlight. In inspires me to see a blog as a force that brings people together in a small but meaningful way.

I know this isn’t the kind of blog post you can take to your boss and say, “see, we should do this too!”  But I did want to show that from a personal side, there are other benefits that you might not read about in the business blogging books.

What about you? What do you get out of your personal blogging?

, , , , , ,

25 Non-Financial Benefits of Business Blogging

Feb 7th

40 comments

While the use of blogging as a marketing and communications platform continues to grow for many organizations, you still might be facing this question from your boss — “Why are we doing this?”

The most obvious answer is that you are ultimately trying to influence some behavior or attitude. You want your readers to buy, register, understand, donate, attend, etc.  But there are many other tangible benefits of business blogging that might be more difficult to measure … but no less important. Here are 25 non-financial benefits of business blogging:

  1. Create a database of answers — Blog about customer questions. Use links to those posts to save time and answer future questions.
  2. Reward employees — Shine a spotlight on brilliant employees by featuring their ideas and accomplishments on your blog.
  3. Marketing integration — Turn content from your blog into sales and marketing materials.
  4. SEO — Having an active, relevant blog can have a powerful impact on search engine ranking.
  5. Point of differentiation — If your competitors don’t blog, is this an opportunity to stand out in your niche?
  6. Solidify POV — The act of blogging forces you to be clear on your company’s position on issues.
  7. Re-purpose the content — Your blog content can be cost-effectively re-purposed for newsletters, eBooks and other publications.
  8. Humanize your brand — There is probably no more powerful and cost-effective way to show the “soft” side of your business than storytelling through a blog.
  9. Sign of activity — A current blog confirms that your website is updated and relevant.
  10. PR — Tweets and Facebook status updates probably aren’t going to attract the attention of reporters. Helpful blog posts will.
  11. Internal communications — Don’t forget about the impact blogs have on your internal audience.
  12. Customer engagement — Creating a dialogue with your customers can lead to powerful business benefits. Why not have customers contribute posts?
  13. Solve problems — Some companies like Caterpillar are using blogs to crowd-source technical problem solving.
  14. New product development ideas — A hot trend is using the blog platform to deliver new product and service ideas.
  15. Voice of authority — Is your company the industry leader? What better way to demonstrate that than a voice of leadership on your blog?
  16. Market segmentation — Many companies (especially in high tech) have multiple blogs to reach customers by different interest, demographic or geography.
  17. Identify advocates — Blog readers may be among your brand’s most powerful fans.
  18. Constant customer connection — Calling on customers is expensive. But a blog post can be a little “sales call” every week.
  19. Test ideas — Need to take a position?  Why not test it with the blog community first?
  20. Assemble chapters for a book — Many companies piece together blog posts to create larger publications.
  21. Research — Throw a question out there and use your blog as a cost-effective and rapid way to get feedback.
  22. Networking – Blog connections have led to finding interns, suppliers and partners for my business.
  23. Establish emotional connection — Blogging’s ability to connect through a story is powerful — especially for non-profits.
  24. Social Proof — Simply having a blog sends a message that your company “gets” social media.
  25. Crisis management – If you have a blog, you don’t have to rely on the press to get the story straight.  Your blog can put the facts out there.

Is this list complete? What other benefits are you realizing from your blog?

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
, ,