The blog tends to get overshadowed these days, doesn’t it? With all the other social platforms out there, we’ve heard more than once about the death of the blog.
But from a new business standpoint, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
You can have the greatest Facebook page in the world, but if your actual .com or blog is the first place prospects visit, you have to make it work for you with relevant and meaningful content.
Which leads me to an interesting post by Steven Hodson (Stop treating your blog like cold calling) at the Shooting at Bubbles blog.
He doesn’t discriminate between a personal and a business blog specifically, but for the purpose of this post, I’m writing in the context of a business blog. He makes a great point about posts becoming veiled cold calls:
Well, the short of it is that blogging should never be about the cold call.
When you start writing only to try and get your foot in that door you aren’t just cheating yourself of an enjoyable moment you are also cheating your reader.
When you become the machine behind the counter performing more by rote than by love
of what you are doing your readers will feel it.
We’ve had success integrating client blog content into our new business reach-out’s, but it only works if that content doesn’t shove the company down the reader’s throat. In fact, the company is rarely mentioned-it’s about the reader, (in this case, the prospect) their world and their challenges.
It may be a stretch to say you have to love the content you’re writing for your blog, but I agree completely with Steven, it needs to come from the heart.
If you’re blogging for your company as part of your overall new business program, take a look at your last several posts: are they disguised cold calls or meaningful, useful communication?
Comments