Why Every Professional and Every Business Should Be Blogging Daily

In a world of increasing complexity and busy-ness most people are overwhelmed with “inputs” – phone calls, emails, text messages, advertising wherever you look, work-related task lists, personal task lists, schedules, bosses to manage, staff to manage, friends to catch up with, children to take care of, etc., etc., etc. – that we naturally filter out a great deal inputs except for the ones that are or priority.

Added to that is the natural process that happens when you’re overloaded – as many of us are in this day and age – where, when decisions are required to be made, your attempt to reduce the components of the decision to the lowest common denominator so that the decision can more easily be made.  I call this process commoditised thinking.

Commoditised thinking is where the attributes of whatever is being thought about – products, services, people, businesses, etc. – are reduced or genericised to the lowest common denominator where points of differentiation and value can be lost.

Because of the demand on decision-maker’s attention and time is increasing dramatically – at least with those who I have canvassed on this subject – then it is often a real challenge for an employee aspiring to rise above their current role, or for a consultant or business owner trying to be even just noticed in their market.

And this is where blogging comes in as a means of providing real differentiation and avoiding being commoditised like other employees, consultants or businesses.

I describe blogging as the ongoing process of a person or organisation presenting, via a website or social networking platform, their thoughts, ideas, experiences and opinions to an audience that has some interest in the subjects being written about with the purpose of benefitting the audience and enhancing the audience’s perception of the writer.  This definition works for those who blog to friends and family as much as those who blog to community groups, peer groups, employers, (potential) clients and market places on a local, regional, national or global scale.

The Benefits of Blogging: Noticeability

Assuming that the subjects you write about are of interest to your audience then, even starting from scratch, you can become noticed and can start the process of differentiating yourself or the organisation that you represent.

Of course, to be noticed in the first place, you will need to be found and you could do this by simply blogging every day, or every working day because every time you write a blog post, it's one more page on your website that Google and other search engines can index and have you listed in people’s searches.

Every new indexed page is one more opportunity for you to show up in search engines, and drive traffic to your website through organic search.

Blogging also helps you get discovered via social media.  Every time you write a blog post, you're creating content that people can share on social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, etc. – all of which helps expose you or your organisation of business to your audience.

The Benefits of Blogging: Differentiation

Unless you do what to be perceived as the same as everyone else in terms of your audience, your blog is a powerful means to show your points of difference through the value that you deliver to your audience via your blog posts.

Understanding your audience is the starting point in the process of differentiating yourself.

The next is to recognise your points of difference and make sure you communicate these in your posts – not by just declaring those points of difference you possess, but how those points of difference deliver value to your audience.

The Benefits of Blogging: Establishing You as an Authority

By providing value to your audience in the content your posts on a regular and consistent basis – especially if that content exceeds the value that other bloggers provide to the same audience – then you will quickly be seen by your as an authority.

The idea of being seen as an authority is very powerful.

As an employee, or potential employee, authority will put you well ahead of “the pack” – others who may have similar skills or experience to you but who don’t go to the effort of using a blog (as effectively as you) to become noticed, let alone be seen as an authority.

And for businesses, establishing your position as an authority is extremely powerful in that it allows you to transition – potentially – from being a seller of products or services to a trusted advisor which is the preeminent position that any business can hold in terms of the perception of its audience or market.

The Benefits of Blogging: Some Interesting Statistics Showing Why You Should Blog

• Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links (click here for the source). 
• B2B marketers using blogs generate 67% more leads (click here for the source). 
• Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages (click here for the source). 
• 90% of consumers find custom content useful (click here for the source). 
• 82% of consumers enjoy reading relevant content from brands (click here for the source). 
• 70% of consumers learn about a company through content rather than ads (click here for the source). 
• 81% of companies consider their blogs “useful,” “important,” or “critical” (click here for the source). 
• Once you write 21-54 blog posts, blog traffic generation increases by up to 30% (click here for the source). 
• Blog articles with images get 94% more views (click here for the source). 
• Content creation is ranked as the single most effective SEO technique by 53% of businesses (click here for the source). 
• If a blog is more than 1,500 words, on average it receives 68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more Facebook likes (click here for the source). 

So, everyone, in summary … start blogging!