Why Blogging Might Be the Perfect Answer to a Business Slump

If I had to choose a strategy to help a business owner turn around a failing business, I’d suggest blogging.  That might seem like an odd choice.  But here’s why I’d recommend it…

1.  It’s free.

You can invest money in a design, a theme, fancy plugins, advertising, etc.  But you don’t have to.  You can start out and get results without those things.  All you need is your domain and hosting (which you likely already have if you’re in business and have a website).  So at the core, blogging is essentially free.

If you’re already struggling in your business you may be unable to invest funds in a big marketing campaign.

2.  It’s flexible.

It’s on your schedule.  3am.  7am.  12pm.  You can write and market your blog anytime.  So whatever challenges you’ve got, blogging gives you flexibility that if you need to, you can work at 3am.

Try making sales calls at 3am.  Or hosting a teleseminar at midnight.  You’d just make a lot of people annoyed with you.

Do your regular marketing during the day, whatever you know works for you now, but add blogging during the late night or early morning hours.  If your business is failing, then working harder is going to be necessary to turn it around and that means late nights or early mornings and blogging fits perfectly into that time slot.

3.  It gives you the content you need to market elsewhere and reach LOTS of people.

When you’re blogging regularly you’ll always have content to share on social networks.  And you’ve always got something to invite people to — your blog!

You don’t have to sell people one at a time and hope you can get your value across in a few minutes of phone or face to face time.  Instead you write your blog and dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of visitors can read your blog.  You’re not limited by how many minutes you’ve got available.

On top of that, the content you’re creating for your blog can be repurposed into all sorts of other marketing tools and products.

4.  It allows you to showcase your expertise and draw clients to you.

Blogging reverses the client chase (so do other inbound marketing strategies).  Instead of having to push and work to convince people to work with you, having a helpful blog allows people to pre-sell themselves on working with you as they read your posts and see your expertise.

5.  It forces you to get your focus on your clients and on giving.

When we get stuck in that mode where we’re afraid of what’s happening in our businesses it’s easy to get so focused on our need for  receiving that we forget to give first.

I’ve found that every time I start to feel fear in my business, if I can just shift that to, “Who else can I help?” and “How else can I be of service?” and focus on giving more, it turns things around for me.

6.  It makes it easy for other people to share you.

See those sharing buttons on the left?  People click them.  If they like the post they’re reading, they’ll share it  and then they’re marketing for me.  That makes my life easier.

A blog makes it easy to add those sharing buttons, and it gives people a reason to share you.  If all I’ve got is a sales pitch for a website, who’s going to share that with their friends?  Turn it into a blog with helpful content though and I’ve given people something valuable to share.

7.  Instant expression, feedback, empowerment.

With a blog you can post whatever you want, whenever you want.  When you’re ready to launch a new program, blog about it.

You can get nearly instant feedback by watching your traffic, social network shares, and comments.  It allows you to build a community that you can check in with and empower — and by empowering them, you’ll empower yourself and your own business to succeed.

But, really, blogging?

Are their quicker paths to money?  Sure.  Get on the phone and make calls until you find a new client.  Boom.  Paycheck.  But what next?  Get on the phone and keep calling constantly searching for clients and selling everyone of them individually, hoping they can see your value from a few minutes on the phone?

If you’re looking for a strategy to help your business now (from the first blog post you write you can get out there and share and promote it) AND to really help establish a great foundation long term, get blogging.

There are more than 7 reasons, too. I could go into how it builds your platform, gives you a place to “host” others so you can build colleague relationships, and more. It’s got so many benefits that I couldn’t fit them into one post with a shoehorn and magic shrinking potion combined. Do it right, do it consistently and it works to build your business beautifully on so many different levels.

Next week, I’ll share some of the biggest mistakes you can make with a blog if you’re trying to generate income and clients.  Because you need to do it right if you want to turn your readers and traffic into clients.

Image Credit: iqoncept/StockFresh