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Blogging to Build Your Business

Why Blogging Helps Your Business

Have you noticed all the business blogs out there? Wondering if a business blog could help your business? Yes, it can! Business Blogging is an extremely effective form of social media marketing for your business. Not only does blogging give you a platform to get your business messages out there, it also allows you to create keyword links to your business. In short, blogging helps your business exposure and traffic as well as building your business search engine rankings.

Choosing Your Blogging Platform

First you must choose your blogging platform. There are lots of blogging options available. If you are just starting out on a no to low budget, you are in luck. You can actually create a free blog with Blogger! There are lots of free templates and you can do upgrades to the design spending minimally. Blogger is fabulous and I used it myself when I was just starting out and getting the feel for how everything worked.

If you are serious about your business and you have any kind of budget to work with, I suggest purchasing your own domain name and using WordPress. Why spend money when you can do it for free? Because WordPress gives you way more control over your blog. Most importantly you can improve the SEO of your blog and articles and this means that your search engine rank will likely be higher as a result. You can use free plug-ins for this or purchase ones that help you even more. This really is an area to invest in so that all the effort you spend blogging will be seen by more people.

What To Blog About

What you choose to blog about is, of course, essential to your business! To be most successful, your blog needs to be informative and useful and not just in your face with sales. If you sell kids clothes, you can provide articles that are useful to parents, such as packing list for camp, with a few keyword links that lead customers directly to your sales pages. It is OK for some posts to be centered around new products you receive or market trends but remember it needs to be something interesting and informative to draw readers.

Don't forget to make good use of your keywords in your post. If you title your article something you think is cute and catchy, it may not be as effective as a title that includes the keywords that the article is focused around so that search engines can locate it. Think about the words you choose and make sure they are what your customer will be searching for.

How Often to Blog

So how often should you blog? The more the merrier, as long as it is quality content. It would be great if you could post once a day. I would say it is absolutely essential to post once a week to build consistency and blog following. Shoot for blog post that are around 500 words of interesting valuable content that also contains your messages and links.

Don't Think You Can Handle Blogging Yet?

Now, you understand that blogging can give your business increased exposure. You know that blogging will improve your traffic and search engine ranking and still you are not sure you can handle it? You can also find already established blogs to feature your business or your guest post and get many of the same benefits. Be consistent with this strategy too as the more exposure and links the better! Ready to give blogging a try? Read these blog networking tips to increase your blog traffic.

Blogging Bonuses For Your Business Bottom Line

You can make pretty penny from Google Adsense if you chose to add it to your blog.

You can charge for banner ads.

You can sign up with a cost per action network and get paid when your readers click their links.

Real Life Stories Of How Blogging Improves Their Business

Here are several real business examples to illustrate the benefits of blogging. You can get some fabulous from these folks about how blogging is working to help them improve their business.

Kathryn Kardos, Travel En Vogue
We use blogging to boost traffic to our retail site, and have been doing so for a year and a half. Before we started, we had about 25 unique visitors per day. Now we have about 200 visitors per day, or 300 during peak season. The increased traffic produced from blogging helps us make sales and boosts our Google Search rank. I try to blog a few times a week so that our site is constantly producing fresh content, and I make sure to use keywords when doing so.

Mike Muhney, CEO & Founder, VIPorbit Software Intl, Inc
We have clearly identified a corresponding uptick in sales based on the frequency of blogging at VIPorbit. The metrics are clear. Blogging, without doubt, is selling.

Sara Sutton Fell, CEO/Founder, FlexJobs
Blogging is definitely helpful to our business. For starters, from a customer's perspective it provides added value through career advice
and tips to help them in their job searches. It also helps new visitors to our website to know more about FlexJobs and the services we provide. From a business perspective, blogging helps to increase our SEO and search engine results which drive more traffic to our site. It helps us to become knowledge leaders in our field, and attracts other businesses to us for partnerships through guest blogging. Blogging also helps us to offer more in our social media outreach by sharing our articles as well as the articles of our peers and partners, which all helps to drive more traffic to our site.
Here's a great number that shows the power of regular blogging for a business: Comparing our blog traffic from May 2010 to the traffic this May 2011, with the only change being that we've increased our blog posts to 5 times per week, our blog traffic increased by 350%. In essence, blogging is an outreach initiative that helps us reach people and bring them to our site which is always positive for business.

SAFEER HASSAN, CEO, Boardwalk Insurance Group
I started blogging for my business a little over a year ago. Before blogging, our website was useless and we only received direct hits (people searching specifically for our company). Once we started blogging regularly, we've seen a tremendous turnaround. We get several leads each week and our website which used to get 5 to 10 hits per week now gets 100-200 per week.

Maritza Dearing, founder of LiYa Lifestyle
This past winter I was asked by a premiere local magazine (201 Magazine) to write a fitness and wellness blog for their new website. I agreed to do so, and now my business is heading into a more public arena, and I must say that although I knew it would be good exposure for me, I didn't realize HOW much exposure I would actually be receiving. The feedback has been tremendously positive, and not only locally, but throughout the entire globe, especially after setting up a Facebook fan page and attaching my blogs on a weekly basis. And this….with a website which is still under construction, and learning more how to build my social media sites.

NICK ROBINSON, Director of Client Services, Social Media Headquarters
Blogging has been instrumental in growing our website traffic, leads,and demonstrating our thought leadership. Every month, 50% of our most visited pages are from the blog. Also the blog allows us to create content that can be shared across social networks in order to increase our reach and visibility. Lastly, the blog allows us to generate leads by including calls to action for downloading white papers and other forms of content.

Mallory Whitfield, Miss Malaprop
When I started out, I was only 22 and I didn't have the capital needed to achieve my goal of owing a retail shop for handmade products. I decided to use my knowledge of social media, blogging and other online tools to create a brand and a customer base first, on the cheap, before expanding into other things. The path Ive chosen has been really great for me, as Ive built a strong following long before I launched my online store. Its made it easier to market my shop and get press for it more quickly. Starting with the blog first has also enabled me to keep my costs low.

Heather R. Huhman, founder and president, Come Recommended, LLC
Both of our blogs are centered around careers. It only takes a minute of reading for a potential client to learn that we know the industry and we know it well. Additionally, our blogs share an audience with the journalists and bloggers we work with already, which strengthens our relationships with different media outlets. Our intern staff does the majority of posting for both blogs. This way, the interns can develop and practice their skills in writing, SEO, and blogging for targeted audiences.

Crystal Nicholls, Fashion For A Cause
Blogging helped the non profit organisation I have been working with to pull off an amazing champagne breakfast, fashion show and charity auction event at the Palazzo Versace hotel. Elevation Care decided to establish Fashion For A Cause, an annual fundraiser event to bring attention to what they are trying to establish in the community, as well as to raise funds for the organisation. I came on board as one of the event planners, as head of all online media. We decided to establish the website in blog format to give it a personal feel and to update content regularly as we needed the google page rank to rise quickly. In addition, I created a facebook and twitter page to drive traffic to the website. In 4 months time, we had 1,500 hits on the website and 2,600 post views on facebook. The end result of our campaign was complete ticket sales 150 people at $75.00 a head, and a profit of over $10,000. This is a method we will definitely use again, as it is a great source of information and a way to keep the guest updated with news.

Stacia Papasavas, Owner of My Fairytale Party
"Our personal experience is that aside from the best form of advertising being word of mouth, another very present power is the word of tech! Not only personally am I a contributor to my local mommy club postings- recommending referrals and suggesting my two cents on motherhood but I've professionally been enamored when viewing my website's google analytics to be shocked and left wondering how a click surge appeared out of cyber space. Well frankly that mystery referral of such particular website links have solved the puzzle revealing that those clicks having been sent from a personal blog of a customer. True that other readers and strangers are taking and deciphering another strangers words, sentences, thoughts and ideas- merging and comparing such thoughts with their own set of ideals. More often that not, there is true power there- feeling a personal connection to the writer- appreciating their thoughts, wit and recommendations. No longer are people just referred by friends and family but often we are influenced by this new media which gives a voice to everyone."

Raymond D. Modglin, RealEstateMonkey
As a real estate professional, radio talk show host, educator and public speaker I use video blogging to create, strengthen, increase and maintain the bond between my clients and myself.

Kristina Cutura, Adwords Cafe
I am an online advertising consultant with my own agency. Through my blog, I help educate advertisers interested in learning more about Google AdWords (Googles advertising platform) and setting up their campaigns efficiently. I left Google, where I worked for over 6 years, to start my own online advertising agency. As an expert, I decided to start sharing industry tips and techniques to help others. My blog is purely educational. However, many readers of my blog have ended up contacting me and hiring me to help with their advertising campaigns. They see me as an expert and this helps establish a relationship with potential clients who may hire me to manage their campaigns. The blog also helps me rank higher in natural/organic search on Google and other search engines, increasing traffic to my main site and improving leads.

Jillian Rowen, Apple Visual Graphics
The word press blog is meant to be a source of inbound linking to our website. We created a blog post about issuing a press release. Now, when someone googles "issuing a press release" our blog is on the first page of the Google results. When you click on the "Issuing a Press Release", wordpress blog link, the reader will be linked back to our website, facebook, twitter and yelp page. Using unique titles on wordpress has allowed us to re-direct traffic to our website. This technique makes us visible to a wider variety of people all of whom are potential customers. People interested in issuing a press release are often in marketing, and as a print shop, we make marketing collateral.
More than anything, by blogging about our work and printing related topics, we become reliable experts in our field. Trustworthiness is still consumer driver despite the tough times the economy has faced.
These blogging techniques, combined with listing ourselves in directories, issuing press releases and responding to inquiries such as these, has helped us improve our Alexa ranking from over 1 million domestically to 128,000 domestically just last week.

Prerna Malik, Owner of The Mom Writes.
"While I am a freelance web and print writer, a large portion of my work involves, managing the blogs, Twitter and FB accounts of small and mom-owned businesses. Being active on a select number of sites and social networks allows me to contribute well and engage with readers and that has really helped my business. Clients for both website content and business blogs have found me online at various blogs, including my own, read my content and contacted me for assignments. "

Erica Davidson, Arbonne Area Manager
"Blogging and social media has been huge for my business. I am an independent consultant and Area Manager with Arbonne International. Since Arbonne has no territories and we are nationwide, I have shared the arbonne opportunity with several interested bloggers from California, Australia, United Kingdom, Iowa, Ohio, to Alabama! I think it is absolutely amazing that I can have a team in another country just by using a cell phone and a lap top! "

Deborah Sweeney, CEO MyCorporation
I feel blogging is a pertinent key to business success these days. With a blog, a used-to-be faceless company transforms into a walking, talking company with a personality. As a document filing service, it's easy to forget that My Corporation has a face. Having a blog allows us to be relatable to customers as our blogs are written in a more conversational tone. Ease of open communication with customers has been another plus to blogging. With the availability of comments on a blog, customers can ask us questions on certain articles and will promptly receive an answer.

Dorian Howard, co-founder, Milk & Honey Shoes
"One of the biggest challenges for my custom designed shoe company, Milk & Honey Shoes, is driving eyeballs to our website. Because we have a unique and special product, we do great with converting shoppers to buyers, BUT we have to get them to our site. We get great press and have great word of mouth, but by having a a fresh and interesting blog that caters to our specific demographic and to shoe lovers in general, we get people coming to our site, not necessarily to buy, but to read about the latest goings on. And sometimes that leads to buying. We try to talk about trends in footwear, celebrity style and noteworthy topics in shoes to get people excited about all things shoes.
Another thing to keep in mind is that people buy from people – they dont buy from businesses. By putting our faces on our homepage, by offering blog posting about us, what were wearing, and the shoes were designing, we are forging a connection with our customers and fans. They feel invested in us and we are able to at least try to replicate a traditional retail experience where the shopper can develop a relationship with the shopkeepers."

John Boyd, founder, MeetingWave
I use blogging to help my business. I do so primarily since helps drive inbound marketing. That is, creating blogs with long tail keywords and allowing my blog links to used on other sites helps my sites search ranking. Over 90% of traffic is driven by search so it helps.

Sophie Bonnet, Deskwanted
We use our blog (or online magazine) extensively to help build our website.Our company is Deskwanted.com, an online portal for finding workspace in coworking spaces and shared offices. We decided to launch Deskmag.com as an online magazine to talk about our work. However, Deskmag took on a life of its own. Rather than just a promotion space, it is now a highly informative news source for everyone in our industry (coworking).My tip would be to treat your blog as a news source, not a promotion vehicle. More people will use it if you provide interesting information pertaining to your entire industry, and not just your own company and achievements. These are important too, of course, but it's better to be a trusted and reliable source and not just a self promotion machine.

Jill Chivers, Creator, Shop Your Wardrobe
How blogging helps my business:
(1) It's a way to stay in regular contact with my readers and my members
(2) It's an avenue to explore all the topics related to my overarching theme
(3) It's a way to provoke new thoughts and ideas on my topic – over shopping and how to become a more conscious shopper.

John Herrigel, My Maine Property
I am real estate broker in Portland Maine. Actively blogging on 3 sites I created has enable me to write about niche regions and current real estate news and housing events to help me gain all sorts of potential buyers.

Louise Hodges, Greenbug All Natural Pest Control Products
I am a woman-owned business selling all natural pest control products for People, Pets, Indoors and Outdoors. I blog all the time! I earnestly began in January and have definitely seen results.
I concentrate my blogs on timely, relevant pest issues. For example, mosquitoes and fleas are an issue right now but in the winter I talked a great deal about bed bugs. I link all my blogs to my newsletters and to Twitter and Facebook in order to maximize exposure. It is my experience that blogging in this manner creates a very slow burn that is building upon itself. I can't say my effort has exploded yet but each entry seems to improve responses. Not just sales, but more 'forwards', more new registrations on my blog, more followers on Twitter, etc. so that the circle of influence grows.

Michelle Dunn, Author
I use a blog to help my business. I am an author and columnist and my
blog covers timely topics to keep readers coming back and hopefully
get's them interested enough to buy my books! Getting people to
subscribe and share your blog posts is very important in having an
effective blog.

Sal Asta, Co-Founder, Wedding Bliss Lane
My wife and I launched an online wedding marketplace called Wedding
Bliss Lane. We do not actually sell anything but provide the platform that allows vendors to create their stores on our site and then sell their items/ services through these stores. Think of us as the eBay of the wedding industry.
We have a blog section on our site where we ask wedding bloggers to
send us some of their blogs and we will post these blogs with links
going directly back to their website. In turn, we ask that they then blog about our site. This has worked great so far as we are developing many relationships and the wedding bloggers love the idea because we
help provide them with content to blog about. It is a win win situation. As a result of this we have been gaining traffic to our site which has been helping sales to increase as well.

Stephanie Watson, Barry Publishing
I use blogging not only for my business but for the business people that I coach. Blogging is a sure fire traffic generator, and the fastest, least expensive way to attract the ideal clients to your business.
Like most service providers I get behind in my blogging, but the minute I
have a break in clients I write and schedule keyword rich content that
attracts the search engines but that is also interesting and attracts real
humans to my sites.

Celia Milton, VowWowWow
We use out blog AS our website. We are attempting to build a nationwide database of dog-friendly wedding vendors that will eventually pay a fee to be listed there. We will also add the ability to shop for products like jeweled collars, dog tuxes, dog treats, etc. At this time, we see no benefit in having an actual website since this blog is being found by search engines, and is inexpensive and easy to add to. I think it also feels more fresh to our readers.

John Caughell, Marketing Coordinator, Argentstratus
We use blogging as an enhancement to our regular sales tool. We beleive that most of our potential customers will never meet one of the founders of the Company but it is important that they understand our philosophy. Therefore I blog everyday about some aspect of our world because it is our way of sharing thoughts and vision with hundreds and thousands of people. I occasionally get phone calls or attend meetings where someone will come up and say that our blog views initially upset them because our thought games challenged their point of view. They then go on to say that they read earlier blogs and "wow, you guys are really thinking about how business should work aren't you?" We believe that sharing our vision is good for us and ultimately good for our clients because they start to see why we do things certain ways and how the method is actually good for their business, even if it seems restrictive. The blogging helps us reach more people and, most importantly reach them on their schedule, than we could by trying to have meetings or presentations.

Shane Fischer, Attorney at Law, Fischer Law
I blog to inform people about recent changes to the law; how to protect themselves; or to offer opinions on high-profile cases. It enhances my credibility and gives a forum to comment or to ask questions.

Bonnie Harris, The Wax Blog
There are two ways my blog has helped my business, and both were quite unexpected. I started a blog to improve SEO for my regular website. Today it serves two important purposes:
1. As a PR person, I get a lot of inquiries from solopreneurs and others who need publicity but arent quite at the level where they can afford me. I always try to help point them in the right direction thought, because I know what its like to be starting out. Now, after a couple years of posting I can usually point them to the posts that will answer their questions. If not, I write a series of posts to answer their questions. It saves me time and gives them a good resource. Hopefully later on theyll hire me!
2. Again, in my line of work it can take a while to demonstrate my expertise. Ive found that before potential clients actually speak to me live, many go to my blog and read my posts. When I do speak to them, the sales cycle is often shorter because they've already got a "feel" for what I do, how I do it and who I do it for.
So although the blog does take time each week, in the long run it saves me time.

Dan Nelms, Amzini
One of the main goals of our initial marketing campaign is to establish Amzini as an expert in the field. By writing one quality blog post per week, we are able to translate our unique data and expertise into traffic and conversions while we establish Amzini as an authoritative voice in the industry. We have supplemented on-site blogging by writing guest posts at highly-trafficked sites, which has been very beneficial at exposing our posts to more people and bringing additional attention to our own site and blog.

WILL VOLPERT, Owner – Indigo Creek Outfitters
Currently our blog gets more traffic than our normal website. We have a ton of posts about local businesses, hotels, restaurants, etc. Our thought is that if people find VisitingAshlandOregon.com while planning their trip to Ashland they are more likely to find out about our rafting trips.

Amy Savage, Chief Marketing Officer , Travel-Tot, LLC
Using the blog, we have been able to connect with many families who might not ordinarily have heard of our product. Our "Destination Mom" speaks to great destinations for families with small children, survival techniques for flights and car rides, great rental gear on the road and much more! We've also been successful in cross promoting with other blogs to open up our audience. Because we offer more than just childproofing information our blog, we are fast becoming a go-to destination for advice for families looking for tips and tools when taking their kids on the road. Because of our blog, we have been approached by national webcasts to speak on vacationing with children.

Tom Shivers Carousel & Rocking Horses
I use blogging to engage prospects on topics that are broad and interesting to my target audience and can easily be tied back into my business. For example, about a week before the royal wedding took place I created the article: What to do if you Weren't Invited to the Royal Wedding and published it about 12 hours before the scheduled event. Then I seeded my network of followers with the cool and funny post and let them do the rest. The day before the wedding, April 28th, I got over 270 unique visitors to the post, plus more on the day of the wedding. Because my followers (on different social sites) liked it, the article also got listed in a few social bookmarking sites and voted to the top of the list within hours – which, I might add, resulted in several nice inbound links to my article. Capitalizing on current events is only one way I use my blog to engage prospects and grow my audience.

Heather Evans, Island Pace Real Estate
Blogging helps our Caribbean real estate business by keeping us relevant to people looking to buy land on Bequia and to home owners on the island, on whom we depend for referrals. Blogging also keeps us at the top of relevant searches.

Drew Winters Candid Snapshots
Being a photo lab specializing in helping event photographers, the pool of people we want to reach with our message is fairly small – which makes reaching those people difficult. On that same note there are not many people writing about special events photography, which gives us a unique opportunity to make our blog the go to place for people in the event photography business. We've been able to establish ourselves as the thought leader in the industry which not only gets more traffic to our website (and more people opening accounts with our lab) but also gives us lots of content to use on our social media sites. One of the really cool things we were able to do with our blog was promote our first ever webinar that was streamed live via Facebook.

Stella Fayman FeeFighters
At my startup, we guest post on many small business blogs about credit card processing in order to expand our readership and build our brand. In addition to blogging on our company blog, we've guest posted on something like 50 small business blogs. We've seen bumps in traffic and have been exposed to new customers from this guest blogging activity.

Rajeev Malik, Co-Founder, Kikscore
We use our blog for interviewing and promoting our customers and potential customers which has led to more customer loyalty (our motto is promote your customers and they will help promote us!)

Ian Aronovich, CEO and Co-Founder, Government Auctions
With our blog, we link back to our own website, use tags and SEO, all while generating new visitors through popular search engines. Each new blog post produces new readers which equates to new free trial activations to our site.

Blake Shipley, Founder & CEO, CoupSmart
I run a company, CoupSmart, that creates social technology (think Facebook and web coupons, plus some other, rather unique software), and we use blogging as a way to connect with our customer base and offer tips to help them grow their business. This helps us tremendously, as we usually focus on topics that can be applied to using our software, such as what makes a good Facebook coupon. We build up a knowledge base that we can refer our customers to, offer some unique insights based upon the knowledge we've built up over the last few years, and it gives us a way to stay in touch with our customers. Plus, we've actually gotten a few new customers from our activity.

Sydni Craig-Hart, Smart Simple Marketing
Blogging has helped my business in so many ways:
* Blogging regularly drives traffic to my website and helps me to build a permission based database of ideal prospects who I can then support through email marketing.
* My blog is the center of my social media marketing efforts, so I always have something interesting to share on my profiles.
* Replying to the many comments on my blog helps me to develop a stronger relationship with my audience and address their personal concerns.
* Blogging also allows me to distribute proven concepts and resources in various formats (podcasts, videos, etc.) so that I can appeal to various learning styles.

Shelley Hunter, Gift Card Girlfriend
Through Google Analytics, I can see how traffic comes to my site and what pages people land on. Via blog posts, I can see what resonates with readers. I'm in the process of revamping my entire main page system because of something I learned via the blogs–when I offer a deal of some sort, people come. I know the rework is the right move because the blog posts proved that people need to be incented to stop their busy day and read what I have to say.

Mike Scanlin, CEO, Born To Sell
We run a subscription service for investors. We blog every week to help them understand the concepts and become better investors. We also use the blog to answer questions from users, so that everyone can benefit from the answers. In addition, we have added a 'share' button at the top and bottom of every blog entry to make it easy for users to share blog articles they like (on whatever social platform they prefer). That has helped increase traffic, too.

Farnaz Wallace, Founder, Farnaz Global
Blogging has helped build awareness of my business and my consulting/speaking products. It is also helping everyone on my list with specific solutions. The ROI on time spent is long-term, not immediate short term. I use other tactics for short term results.

Elisabeth Manning, Conscious Conception
Offering my product to bloggers to review was the best decision for me (I still do) because they really appreciate the "gift" and I am appreciating that they are so excited to share about it. I really know my product can help many people, but because it is so unique, this is the best way to approach product awareness until it gains momentum.

Trent Dyrsmid, Local SEO Partner
By blogging, and comnenting on other peoples blogs, I get a fair amount of traffic to my site. The other major benefit of blogging is that people comment on my posts, tweet them, and publish to their facebook pages. These are all factors that contribute to increased traffic on the blog.

Allison Dorst, Pink and Greens
Our blog combines all things related to our brand and makes relevant content accessible to our customers.Through this, we feel we lock in a sense of engagement which ultimately serves as the driving force of our customer relations as well as assists in the increasing of sales and overall brand awareness. Often times, our blog is simply a matter of sharing pieces Ive found that I feel our customers will be interested in it. Its so simple to share such content and truly enforces the relationship we have with our target audience.

Andy Warner, Ecommerce Director, Tonkin Family of Dealerships
The biggest benefit our business receives from blogging is the search engine optimization benefit and the "subject-matter expert" title. For example, we were able to rank high through our search results for various "how-to" and "feature" keywords for various makes and models. This improved our search results for multiple keywords and long-tail search. The domino effect occurred when customers contacted us with more questions (because we were the "subject-matter expert") and we were able to service their needs.

Heather John, Marketing, Affordablelamps.com
Blogging is a fun, informal, and creative way for us to reach potential customers and show them the unique styles and technologies available to home designers and DIYers.

Michele Palenik, Purple Cloud Studio
I use blogging to drive traffic to my site by updating my content regularly. I know that blogging drives the traffic…I log into my web stats and see from where my hits originate.

Sarah Baldwin,Vice President, Marketing, Goodnighties, Inc.
When I connect stories of my life that are in fact, wacky & exhausting (and true!)… people laugh… and in many cases they 'click' on the link hidden to Goodnighties under names like 'nite nite' that I have in each of my postings that then, promotes our business… Afterall, you can't survive this life without sleep and who better to address that than an overwhelmed mother! (ME) … And yes, I do see increases in customers I normally would not be able to reach.

Marian Thier, Expanding Thought, Inc.
What leads me to believe that blogging helps build my business:
1. more inquiries
2. people actually telling me they read the blog and write comments
3. requests to speak at conferences
4. online orders
5. researchers feeding me info to post
6. when I give webinars/workshops, people sign up for access to the blog
7. invitations to write guest posts

Denise Keller, COO and co-founder of Benchmark Email
The blog allows us to create client engagement. Occasionally, the writer touches a chord with the reader (as happened recently with our Fathers day blog post). This type of genuine dialog creates invaluable rapport with the readers- our clients and clients-to-be.

Rebecca Rodriguez, Marketing and Events Assistant, Parties That Cook
By posting each blog on our Facebook and Twitter pages, we have found a new way to actively engage our followers and fans, maintain relationships with past clients and build new relationships with those who may not be familiar with Parties That Cook.

Jacqueline Gikow, Chelsea Rainbow
I blog about a variety of business topics relating to jewelry and home decor – SEO, trends, an occasional profile of a craftsperson. I always put a link back to my shop at the end of the post and Ive been slowly building up a following. I get a lot of people leaving comments on the topics I write about and have seen the views of my shop increase.

Gretchen Cawthon, Girls Can't What?
I have a unique spin on blogging. I put out one article a week as a "challenge" with ideas for women on how to achieve heir dreams. The rest of the week, I have my users submit their own stories by answering my tagline. Once their article is published, my readers are likely to post a link to it on their own blogs and social media, which drives traffic back
to my site that I otherwise wouldn't reach. It's a win-win for us both, plus we get some really great user-submitted content! They provide the "blogging" for me and then spread the links to their published article on their networks. That drives traffic back to my site and I pick up new subscribers for my newsletter, facebook fans and twitter followers that eventually turn into customers.

Marc Anderson, Manager TalktoCanada
We use our blog to get the word out about our services. A lot of the information on the blog doesn't directly promote our services but in turn puts us out in the marketplace as a company that helps students learn. Most people visiting the blog via the search engines wont buy but that doesn't matter because over time they will tell a friend who is looking for online lessons or a co-worker. The blogging strategy is really one of our more long term client acquisition strategy. Its not always the easiest to measure but it helps to raise awareness for TalktoCanada.com.

Alice Osborn, Write From the Inside Out
Blogging helps my business because I give information freely in my blog and as I do so I build trust with my future clients who are looking for my editing and writing services or want to book me as a speaker.

Eric Clark, CEO – Quincy Tutoring
2.5 months ago we launched our online tutor network. Blogging is a great way for our tutors to highlight their skillset, and market their abilities. We also utilize guest blogging to help spread our message. There have been several times where we have exchanged blog posts with other websites. It is important to get our links on other websites to help with our SEO. Blogging is a great way to accomplish that.

Sherri Cappabianca, Co-owner, Rocky's Retreat Canine Health & Fitness Center Blogging is an important part of our marketing strategy but perhaps not in the way one may think. While part of our current blogging is documenting the build-out of our facility (our grand opening is Sept 10th), another and more important current and long term piece is to add posts that educate the dog owning public about a wide variety of topics. Our goal and passion is to help owners help their dogs stay healthy and happy for as long as possible, and through educational blog posts and other avenues, we feel we can achieve that goal. And when we help dog owners with whatever issues they face, we've found in turn, they support our business. Its about what you give, without expectation of a return.

David Kraljic, Co-Founder, Votetocracy
Blogging has been very important to our business. One specific example of how it helped is when we released an infographic explaining How a Bill becomes a law. That article got picked up by several other outlets and printed in a Hawaiian Newspaper. We ended up gaining about 100 new members to our site from Hawaii just from that one article.

Allyson Piper, Marketing Advisor, Marketing in Bloom
I use blogging as an integral part of our marketing plan. For myself and a number of my clients blogging has helped boost our recognition and credibility within our target markets. The key to maintaining and leveraging that credibility is consistency. By using an editorial calendar as a guide and sticking to a regular blogging schedule Ive seen the best results.

Erin Meagher, Founder, Kelapo Coconut
Our blog has been a way to connect with current coconut oil users and to also introduce new users to coconut oil. The blog is constantly gaining more and more views of unique visitors from across the country and even other countries! We see it as a great marketing and branding tool for Kelapo. Plus, we get to interact directly with our consumer, and we love that!

Lori CorsoTwin Cakes Bakery
We started our bakery just locally but as soon as we started our blog we started our online store and many of our readers are our customers! We have been able to create an amazing relationship with many of our customers through our blog and our healthy journey story we share on our blog.

Jennifer A. Chiongbian, Rutenberg Realty NYC
I knew that I didn't have the time or the patience to blog; but when I read the stats that blogging can increase your traffic to your site by 45%, I knew I HAD to find the time and make the commitment. My site is only 4 months old (Feb 2011) but averages 1000 visitors a month! I slowly learned to love blogging because of the results and the rise in business that I have seen.

Elizabeth Ehlen A Gift of Hope Adopitions
We use it to educate our clients and anyone else who is interested in adoption topics as well as to direct people to the services provided by A Gift of Hope Adoptions. I think it is important to use blogs to educate and inform as well as to increase business, particularly as that is always part of the mission of a social service agency.

Janet Barclay, ORGANIZED ASSISTANT
As a virtual assistant/website designer, I'd identified my target market as professional organizers, but had never made it a key part of my marketing message. I started a blog, but it was fairly generic and covered a wide variety of business topics. For an online course about blogging, I had to create a new niche blog, and decided my niche would be professional organizers. Since then, I've incorporated the new blog into my business website, fine-tuned my message, and focus my networking and marketing activities on people in the organizing industry. I've now developed a reputation as a specialist and am receiving referrals from organizers who have never even done business with me. More importantly, nearly all of my new business now comes from professional organizers – and it all started with that blog.

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