This isn’t my first foray into blogging. I’ve been doing it since before the term existed, back when we called these things “online journals” (my LiveJournal account was opened May 27, 2000) and through the brief transition from “weblog” (which originated to tell readers of something interesting you’d found online) to blogging as it is known today.
I’ve never been especially good at it; not the writing aspect, that part comes easily to me. It was the consistency that I wasn’t any good at; that and being confident enough that I had something worth reading to say.
Now I’m a marketing student, and we’re studying blogging. This blog is even an assignment, so here I am blogging again, but this time I know exactly what to write about: three things I didn’t know I didn’t know about blogging.
It’s a big deal
It turns out blogging is kind of a big deal for marketers. The research shows that 45% of marketers name blogging as the most important aspect of their content strategy1. That’s huge. I have been reading brand-based blogs for years without realizing how important it was to my own connection to the brands I love. Knowing that it has such an impact makes blogging something that no marketer, no business, no entrepreneur can afford to ignore.
And I don’t intend to!
It humanizes a company or brand
I guess this one makes sense, and it’s something that I probably should have figured out on my own. Blogging gives a brand or a company a personal face that users and potential users can interact with, learn from, and experience. It allows brands to tell their story in a different format than customers usually hear it in. It allows them to share a bit of themselves beyond the transactional relationship that is often the sole interaction that customers have with a brand.
It allows the brand to show the real people behind and connected to it, and to connect to the real people who are choosing it daily. It’s something that I do in my own business as a market gardener, but since I’m a one-person operation I have a different perspective on the brand-client relationship, I think. The idea of connecting big brands with customers through blogs is fascinating and one I can’t wait to explore further.
It helps build a portfolio
The idea that any brand or company would care that I had an existing blog in my portfolio is something I still don’t really understand. Oh, sure, I get that they’re going to want to know that I have the skills required to put one word after another in a captivating and readable way, but blogging? I didn’t see that one coming.
But I won’t be missing out on making that impact, either.
Blogging is much more than just writing about something and hoping that it floats to the top of the ether. Writing a blog requires thought, consideration, planning, and time to do well. It requires you to understand the audience to which and the subject about which you’re writing. It requires you to be authentic and share something of yourself with your audience; to make that connection; to keep readers reading and make them want to come back for the next post.
And it requires you to write the next post and the next. Consistency above all else is the key to blogging well; it has always been my worst blogging trait. We’ll see if blogging-as-assignment can fix that.
Have you ever blogged, whether for marketing, or for fun? How did it go? What are the things you know now that you didn’t know then about blogging? I’d love to learn more.
1. 35 Content Marketing Statistics You Need To Know In 2016. Forbes.
Terry, as always, your prose is a thoroughly enjoyable read. I noticed that you’re employing tags. I’d be grateful if you would show students how they can use tags in their own blog posts next week in class.