Small Business Blogging

Posted on April 30, 2007

I’ve started Small Business Entrepreneur Blog about 2 years ago and did so far about 130 posts. I don’t speak English natively, but got Google Ranking 5, some good links from fellow bloggers (they say my English is wonderful music to their ears) and made it as required reading at the Indiana State University. I’m also owning part of a small business about Web Design.

So how does Small Business Blogging really work?

I must confess, I started blogging as a project for my Master studies, blogging was never in my Business plans for my business. But yes, from the second or third post it became a business blog - sharing insightful small business experiences.

Did it help my business?
I’m running my business on word of mouth and most of my clients are friends of my clients. I have never advertised and even the company site is rarely updated. The blog didn’t get me new clients but it served as a “Portfolio/see who I am” thing. When I had to prove myself and establish thrust in Energybyte, I simply sent people to the blog - work done.

Does it work outside software businesses?
We, bloggers and software professionals tend to think that blog is the mother of all things in promoting something, establishing thrust, and say something to the world. But hey, most business are done offline! My blog doesn’t matter to a small shoe company that might want a site, or to a restaurant near me. So I would say, blogging only works when you sell to software professionals, or people that use Internet as a main source of information. “For a small software company, a good blog is easily the single best marketing activity they can invest their time in because by conversing on the net about the problems people have that their software addresses they demonstrate their expertise, build their online reputation, connect with other people interested in solving that problem (aka, customers) and play to their strengths” says Bob Walsh in an interview about blogging.

What about exposure?
Yep, I did get a little International Exposure, but frankly, when you are a Small Business you think about the local market first and later about World domination. But that’s ok, it brings me potential customers from all over the World, I don’t mind.

Networking

People blog to share their thoughts with the world. Sometimes, software professionals are so lonely wolfs that they never go out to socialize. Hell, they even invented “social networking” like MyBlogLog and have virtual blogging friends.

Advantages and risks for corporate bloggers
Let me give you a link on the subject: Hwyel Evans

Let’s also link to some older stuff I wrote about blogging:

Anyway, if you are not really convinced into blogging, or ready to allocate time for it, let me tell you something: blogging requires time, and once you started you have to keep on going, or the work will be lost as soon as you stop. Because, by their viral nature, blogs should be updated quite often…

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