- Everyday over 70,000 new blogs are created, so why add to the noise?

Clients frequently ask me if they should bother blogging. I hear their silent reservations: Just what’s the point adding to all the shouting? The last thing the world needs is another blog, I say.

Unless of course you’ve got something really bloody interesting to say and don’t think clumsy rehashing of other people’s work is good use of a blog.

In explaining my position on blogs I’ll use Talkies – a seller of PR services mostly to businesses that sell to other businesses (B2B).

In our case blogging does NOT:

- Directly generate new business

- Make the phone ring (when it does it’s usually people I’d rather not talk to)

- Grow a market profile

- Bring fame and riches

- Generate significant web traffic (about 200 visitors a month)

- Impress heaps of people (perhaps no one at all – the few Talkies visitors appear not to be big readers)

So why does Talkies bother blogging? Here’s what blogging DOES for Talkies

- Improves organic search rankings on specific business related search terms (like PR)

- Provides potential customers – people looking for services like ours – a taste of our thinking and style, so they can enquire, or not

- When people hear about Talkies the first place they look is online. (Not so long ago they might have reached for the Yellow Pages – are they still around?)

-  Thanks to frequent original posts Talkies is easily found on search engines (should typing www.talkies.co.nz into the address bar prove troublesome)

- Occasionally, news organisations and other writers point their readers to our content, amplifying Talkies messages, making us feel warm on the inside

- When markets, particularly professional services, are at parity, customers instinctively look for points of difference. A blog is a window into the soul (well, maybe the belly) of the personalities you’ll deal with. Could be a good thing or a bad thing. But at least you’re in the picture before wasting too much time.

There you go. Tell your friends, or not.