By archelys3@gmail.com 5 Ways Blogging Can Increase Your Business Exposure
Maybe you’re thinking about blogging, and aren’t sure what it’ll take. Or you’ve got a blog, and aren’t sure what to do with it, how to stay focused, or how to face the daily grind.
For the sake of getting clarity in your business, my recommendation is, “do it!” The payoffs are huge — and, too numerous to go into in a single post.
But one thing blogging will do is force you to get clear. How? Here are five ways I’m finding blogging to be incredibly clarity-producing:
- Blogging forces you to examine your business, see what your niche is, and your contribution.
You may say you’re about, “helping people do business better,” or “getting more clients,” or “keeping the clients you have.” But until you start exploring the basis for why you are doing that, and what you actually know about it (two things blogging is great for), you can sit in the la-la land of ignorance for a long, long time — and actually think you’re educated.
When you blog, you pound on ideas, wrestle with concepts, and autopsy topics. You get under the fingernails of your subject and scrape for dirt. You probe in places you didn’t know you could probe, all in the search for compelling material to write about.
And in that process, you get really, really clear about what you’re doing, what you’re saying, and why you’re saying it. There’s no room for namby-pambying, and no fences to sit on — not if you want an audience, that is.
- Through writing, you find yourself and your voice.
This goes beyond clarity about what you’re writing, and into the realm of who’s doing the writing.
Blogging (not good blogging, anyway) isn’t the same as presenting a quarterly report; it demands authenticity, honesty, and presence. You have to show up in your writing, or else your writing is gonna suck.
And just as blogging will make you learn your subject, it’ll also force you to take a stand, to share your opinions, and bring your feelings and convictions out into daylight.
As David Seah writes,
I think it’s a necessary part of working through my motivation to live my own life in alignment with my values. Perhaps my writing here is the “expression of my art”; since I can’t paint or write music, writing about my experiences, anxieties, and solutions to deal with them is my way of facing them.
Blogging is going to help you find that alignment for yourself, perhaps more so than anything other kind of writing, simply because it’s all public. There’s nowhere to hide (except back in the world of static websites).
And, it’s good for you to bring that level of self-awareness into your blog, too. Unless you want a droning, spineless blog that’s as disposable as yesterday’s lettuce… but you don’t want that, do you?
- You can’t hide anymore behind platitudes.
“Vanilla” statements of purpose (like sanitized mission statements) and same-old-same-old phrases (please, no more “value-adds”!) won’t cut it anymore; you have to prove that you know what you’re talking about.
People can spot inauthenticity a mile away. If you hide, you won’t be found.
‘Nuff said.
- Blogging is a marvelous litmus test.
You actually get feedback about what resonates with people, and what doesn’t (providing your blog has comments enabled, of course). If people are commenting, then they’re finding something of quality to sink their teeth into.
And despite what you may think, the dialogue doesn’t have to all be positive, either. Sometimes when you strike a nerve, you can engage people in conversation (of course, they may start by saying you’re full of it). Conversation leads to communication, and a greater familiarity with each other. And if you’ve got the ears to hear that, then even a heated debate can breed respect.
I’ve gotten into some great debates with people in blog comments; some pretty, some not so pretty. But the intention I carried into it was to understand their viewpoint and communicate mine, not to convert them to my way of thinking. And in that, I gained even more clarity about where I was coming from, held my beliefs a little more loosely, and sometimes even switched to liking their perspective better.
No matter which way it goes, though, I respect anyone willing to engage in the conversation with an open mind.
- Blogging makes you succinct.
Are there more than this? Sure there are. But I’ve said enough for now…
… now, it’s your turn.
Read:
- How I Lost & Rediscovered My Uniqueness, embracing your uniqueness – archely
- learn and thrive to pursue your dreams and achieve them – archely
- 3 Steps how to improve your life quality – archely