01-May-2011 15:58

Blogging in business? You must be joking!

This is a 'guest blog' by a good friend Sarah Arrow, the director of Special Projects for Essex same-day courier company, Arrow Light Haulage

Thanks for your contribution Sarah - Norman Feiner, Managing Director, SimplyFone Ltd
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Should you even be blogging at all?

I recently posted a guest blog over at Law Hounds (www.businesslawtips.co.uk/i-am-a-blogger-so-sue-me/ ) on their business
blog, and in it wrote about blogging and being an easy target for legal action when someone takes a dislike to what you have written.

It may seem that blogging is hardly worth the hassle.

I suggest that you keep an eye on the tips blog, it has the potential to be a great resource for bloggers - especially on how to avoid the pitfalls when writing on the internet.

Why am I highlighting the Business Law Tips blog?
Because blogging is a powerful way of attracting new readers and building trust with them.
If you are looking for a new supplier you usually do two things - ask a friend, or Norman's case; ask the wife ;), or search the internet.

Sometimes you do both and Google the person you have been recommended.

A blog when updated gives you 55% more pages in the search engine than
a business that doesn't blog (stats from Hubspot).

Attracting a customer using powerful information is nothing new, magazines and newspapers do it all the time. And whilst it's expensive to start a magazine or a newspaper, it's not so costly to start a blog.

For less than the cost of a month's worth of classified ads you can be online, blogging and pulling in clients like a magnet.

Hang on a minute, is blogging really that easy?

Well yes and no.
If you are confident then it's easy and if you are not so confident then it becomes harder.

Not quite the answer you are looking for?

Well if you can write an email, you can write a blog post and if you can press send on an email then hitting publish should be no problem.

If you follow up your emails then promoting your blog post will come naturally to you BUT if this is something you struggle with then you have two options...

1. Learn to do it yourself

2. Pay someone else to do it

To me, no one will know the voice of your business better than you but if writing doesn't coming easy then you need to look at what you can do.

Can you set up the blog and trade a series of guest posts?

This is also known as Multi Author blogging, blogging as a team means you can get some great results.

Can you set up a free Wordpress.com site to practice on?
Could you take a few hours a week to learn the skills you need?

I think you can :)

As a person relatively new to blogging, I started in April 2007, (in internet years that makes me a veteran ;))
I had to learn it all from scratch and to this day I am still learning.

I now have a writing coach and I have guest blogged on some very influential blog sites but more importantly I won business from blogging.

The unexpected side of blogging.

Aside from being threatened with legal action, stalked and hounded relentlessly online I have made some strong friendships.
What surprised me were the international friendships. I have American, Canadian and Australian friends. I would love to meet them and some day I will.

Where some of my European friends have no idea about why I blog, my international friends do and soon we are starting a project where we blog together.

I don't know how it will work out... whether it will be a success or bomb but I do know that in blogging together we will all grow our businesses more.

Blogging is one of the most powerful communication tools there is, and when you do it often the desire to pick up the phone and chat is stronger.

Want to give it a go?

Sarah.

Sarah Arrow is the director of Special Projects for - www. arrowlighthaulage.co .uk - Essex same day courier company, Arrow Light Haulage.

She recently published a successful ebook on: http://www.saraharrow.co.uk/whats-this-site-about/advanced-blogging/ Blogging for Business

She also met Norman Feiner – Managing Director of SimplyFone Ltd through blogging!

See, it works.