Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Why the bleep is a blogging consultant telling you not to do all the usual things pro bloggers advise in order to become an expert blogger?
Because it’s probably not your job.
If you run a business (freelance, micro-ISV, small biz, Fortune 500, whatever), then your goal is to do that — not be an expert blogger. You don’t have to be an expert. What I write on Remarkablogger is not designed to make you an expert blogger. It’s designed to help you avoid costly mistakes and focus your blog on its purpose.
And if you have a business to run, what is the purpose of your blog?
Exactly: to help you get customers and sales. Blogs (and their related aspects, such as social media) are a way to condense marketing, online networking, and customer service all into one power-packed location. It’s great to be good, but there is no need to be perfect.
Much blogging advice out there is well-intended and correct, but you get the feeling that maybe if you had nothing else to do all day, perhaps you could take all the recommended steps. The stars will not fall from the heavens because you aren’t posting every day or fretting about your headline writing skills. When other people give you advice, they like to make it complicated so that it sounds like they know a lot.
Me, I like to uncomplicate things and simplify them and shortcut them. Like my 10 types of business blog posts, for example. It’s formulaic and it always works. Ironically, using them as templates will probably make you seem like an expert. But you don’t have spend too much time blogging and you can get back to the other aspects of running your business.
The business that your blog is supposed to helping.
11 Comments
I think this rings true even outside of the realm of business blogging. My blog has been growing quite steadily in readership since its inception a little under two months ago. I am not an expert - quite the opposite. I’m trying to make a living online, failing so far, have not made a single cent but people want to read the story, see how I go. There are so many ‘experts’ around that it can get tiresome. I think people want real people blogging about real things.
AMEN! Most small business owners, and virtually every independent service professional SHOULD be blogging.
Somehow, blogging has been turned on it’s ear! Blogging is communicating, pure and simple. It’s a GREAT way for independent service professionals to share their expertise… which is what they are selling!
Great post!!
Thanks, Kathy. You want to watch using URLs to specific posts in your comments, because they get truncated and are therefore useless. Just enter the URL to your blog’s home page.
Michael I see this all the time in my field. We are not professional bloggers but agents. I see agents talk about how successful they are as bloggers because of awards and such. But these are the same ones that haven’t sold anything in 6 months. If I am not making sales then I don’t think of my blogging as being a success. Because my blogging is to be a part of my business and not my business I don’t always have the time to do it perfect. But I use the guidelines to help me give my best! Great stuff! - Ashley
Ashley, thanks for commenting and lending a professional perspective on this from a different field. Based on what you’re saying here, I think you’ll find my next post interesting: Blog about what you do, not what you think. I would trust an agent blogger who’s closing deals left and right over one who talks a lot but isn’t getting anything done. You nailed it exactly.
As a potential customer, I want to know what you’re doing for your existing customers. Basically, I want to know why I should trust you. What are you going to blog about that accomplishes that?
Industry news and all that has its place, for sure: a distant second behind telling your readers about what you’re accomplishing for your clients. If you blog about how you’re helping your clients make their business rock, people will beat down your door.
Just hire an expert blogger for your blog. I work like that all the time (I blog for other businesses). Indeed I prefer it to conventional SEO which is kind of outdated by now.
Tad, For a multi-person business that tactic makes great sense, but for an individual consultant or freelancer, the blogger and the business owner needs to be the same person. Don’t you think it would be a little weird if my blog were written by someone else other than me?
Well, I could write your blog all right
!
Many, even most people are not natural born writers or bloggers, so in these cases hiring is probably even then a good idea if you’re a one man business. Even if you pay someone for 3 hours a week. That would be 3 blog posts a week and sufficient for a blog.
Tad, I think there might some unpleasant fallout to that approach. Who deals with comments, and how is the ghost writer going to be knowledgeable enough to answer for the business owner? Because they would be put in the position of essentially making business decisions for the blog/business owner. Then there is also the problem of the business owner not knowing what’s happening on their own blog, and having to deal with questions or issues that the client will assume the owner should be familiar with, but isn’t. Not good. Unless it’s made clear that the blogger isn’t the business owner, this scenario doesn’t work well.
When there is a one-person business and a blog is the main web vehicle for the person/business, clients expect that the person on the other end is the business owner. If a ghost writer could take the place of the business person, maybe that ghost writer could be doing something a bit more profitable.
If I were seeking a person with certain skills to hire, and I go a blog and I see that the person blogging isn’t the business owner or, worse yet, discover that I had been deceived by a ghost writer posing as that person, that would make me not want to business with that person.
I know that a professional blogger can become knowledgeable enough and operate as a representative of a company on that company’s blog — there’s no question about that, and of course people do it all the time. I highly recommend that strategy. But business of one that uses a blog as their main web presence should have the business owner be the voice of that blog. I’m not potentially hiring your ghostwriter… I’m potentially hiring you.
Michael, this is a simple post that makes a lot of sense to me. In my limited experience, it can be very easy to focus on the art and science of blogging instead of the reason for blogging.
Perfection isn’t necessary, but communication is.
Mark, thanks! The reason is of the utmost importance, because everything that you’re doing in your blog should be in support of that reason. We get sidetracked all too easily.