

Image sourced from Mike Licht on Flickr

I think that setting up a blog is a good idea no matter what you do. If you are in business, setting up a blog will help you to reach your audience and convert them into customers. Putting together a personal blog can also have some pretty big rewards.

Today I am going to introduce some compelling reasons why you should be blogging, separated into personal and business sections. Of course if you have a business blog there is no reason why you shouldn’t start a personal blog, so if after reading this article that is something that sounds appealing, you might want to give it a go.

If you are interested in learning more about blogging, or content in general, here is a list of the articles (sorted by most recent) on content you can find in this blog.

Why Start a Personal Blog?

There are a number of benefits to owning a personal blog. The gains may be small to begin with, but if you are prepared to invest some time into blogging it can be really beneficial for a lot of reasons, some of which I am about to talk about:

Providing an Income

Over time you can start to build a sustainable income through your blog -you could even get it to the stage it would start to generate money on its own, with no input from you.

Usually however, you do need to keep working at and maintaining your blog to receive a steady income. The site needs to stay active. If your site suddenly stops publishing its popularity is likely to decline.

Job Offers

There have been countless examples of people being offered excellent jobs on the merits of their blogging. Blogging gets you in front of an audience and is an excellent tool for promoting yourself as a thought leader within a subject area.

Blogging can also help people to relate to you on a more personal level. Most blogs (especially personal ones) are written in a way that shows a glimpse of the authors personality. This helps bloggers to form a connection with their audience, which of course can include potential employers.

Getting a Message Across to the Masses

If you have a blog with an established audience, then obviously it’s a medium you can use to get a message out to that audience. There’s a number of reasons people might want to get a message out, and having a personal blog can certainly help to provide them with that voice they have been looking for.

Why Your Business Needs a Blog

As I am sure you might be aware, blogging is an incredibly effective tool for businesses. In fact blogging and social media are having a huge impact on the way that business is conducted today. For many businesses, failing to understand and adapt to the changes brought about by blogging and social media is going to seriously impact their chances of survival.

Generating Exposure

Blogs can be used to generate lots of exposure to your business. By promoting the articles you publish, and through ranking for search phrases you can get your business in front of your target audience in a cost-effective manner.

Improving Customer Retention

By providing your existing customers with help and advice via your blog you can provide them with the information they need and help to make them feel valued as a customer, which will go a long way towards improving customer retention. This will also show your prospects that you care about your customers, potentially increasing the likelihood they will convert into customers themselves.

Branding Yourselves as Thought Leaders

Blogs are a great place to show off your knowledge and educate your target audience about what you do. You can really show off your expertise in your particular field and brand yourself as a thought leader within your industry.

A great tip for this is to go to sites like Quora and Yahoo Answers and find some commonly asked questions that are relevant to your business. Now write a blog article that answers those questions really well. Go back to the Q&A sites and answer the questions by providing a link back to your blog article.

Showing Your Human Side

Finally, blogs are a great way to show your businesses human side. This is becoming more and more important in modern business. Blogging can be used as a tool to help show the human side of your buisness. For some great reading on this topic check out Chris Brogan's Blog. His company (Human Business Works) specialises in helping businesses show their human side and he is a very engaging writer.

But That's Not All

I have given you a few good reasons why you might want to start a personal and/or business blog, but I certainly haven't covered everything. I hope I have been persuasive enough and provided some good reasons for you to go ahead and start blogging, and that blogging brings you a great deal of success and helps you achieve your goals. Thankyou for reading.