If you are a new attorney, high-tech start-up, or private consultant looking to grow your business, it can be extremely difficult to get noticed. The big names in your industry already have the advertising budgets, the established networks, and the full-time business-development staff. You might be a single person (or a small firm) who is more worried about paying the bills due next month and staying in business.
In such a situation, it is hard to find the time to acquire new clients, business, and customers when you are busy servicing your existing ones. Creating a blog can help - after all, it is not just for teenagers spreading gossip or people putting their diaries online anymore. Here's how:
1. Thought Leadership. In today's media-saturated climate, traditional advertising is becoming less and less effective because people have become more cynical. Since advertising now appears everywhere from television to a person's e-mail account, people are subconsciously "tuning them out" more and more. Luckily, there is a much better - and cheaper! - way to connect with your target audience: Start a company blog on your website.
If you are a divorce attorney, write authoritative essays on new changes in divorce law and on divorce in general - this will tell your prospects that you "know your stuff," and that is much more effective than some generic advertisement in a newspaper. If you are a start-up in Philadelphia, discuss the latest news in your industry and tell future customers (and possible investors!) about your upcoming product or service. The possibilities are limited only by your creativity. Show people that you are an expert - don't let advertising just tell them. (For an example, here is an earlier post about the economics of flexible office-space in today's business climate.)
2. More Website Traffic. For reasons that are too complex to go into detail here, search engines like Google love sites that have blogs, and they rank more highly and more often in search results. Simply put: Google likes websites that are fresh and frequently-updated with quality content because people like the same thing. (And Google's business goal is to direct people to sites that they will like.) Adding a blog to your company portal is a simple method to do so - and, in general terms, you will generally receive more traffic the more that you write.
3. Greater Social-Media Exposure. If your company has a Facebook page, Twitter account, or LinkedIn profile, it is simple to "feed" your blog posts automatically to those channels.
When you are a small business competing against established competitors you can be quick and nimble while large corporations are slow and plodding. It takes a Fortune 500 company several months to create, approve, and implement an entirely new marketing strategy. A small firm can do it in a day or two - and blogging is just one tactic of many.
In future posts, we will go into more detail on the dos and don'ts of company blogging - here, we just wanted to introduce the idea for those clients and readers who had not yet realized some of the benefits of blogging.
In the meantime, be sure to "like" and "follow" our Facebook page and Twitter account for more daily tips and small-business news!