Should Small Businesses Blog?

That's the question posed on the One by One Media blog.  Their answer was "it depends."  I can certainly see why it's hard to make a blanket statement and recommend blogging to every organization, especially with the time investment required to make it successful, but...

Having enjoyed the benefits of blogging for more than two years now I can honestly say it would take some serious arm-twisting to convince me it's not worthwhile.  If I were to start a small business tomorrow, local focus or not, I guarantee you blogging would be part of my business plan.

The key benefit I see for local/small businesses blogging is visibility.  Sure, you can buy AdWords from Google and try to buy your way to the top of the search results.  Good luck.  I think a better investment is creating a great blog that becomes a solid resource for new and existing customers.

Google any of these phrases: average advance, author advance, what makes a bestseller?, book publisher blog, development editor or any one of several other publishing-related terms and you'll see my blog is first or second link in the search results.  Google searches represent the bulk of my incoming traffic and it's all because this blog ranks so high in those important search results (thank you, Robert Scoble!).

This is the product of hundreds of posts on publishing topics.  If it can work for my blog on publishing it can work just as well for a small business owner's blog.  One of the keys to success is to figure out how to post enough about the important phrases/topics so that you too can appear at the top of the Google search results.  I keep telling my brother-in-law that a well-written blog could enable his practice to own the phrase "Fishers chiropractor"; other offices currently appear at the top when you Google that phrase, but none of them have a blog.

Small businesses like this tend to still focus on Yellow Pages ads.  Who uses the Yellow Pages anymore?!  If you really want visibility for your business you need to seriously consider blogging.

Comments

[Erik]

Joe - you'd be doing your bro-in-law a decent favor just to switch the "fishers chiropractor" anchor text to point to his site instead of to the Google SERP.

I'm always eager to help out the local business... :)

[Joe Wikert]

Hi Erik, aka "Mr. SEO"!, you are, no doubt, correct...but I was just trying to give readers a quick view of the actual search results, not necessarily boost his rankings! Your point is valid though.

[Tris Hussey]

Hey Joe thanks for the link. I would, pretty much, agree with you that a new business should have blogging on it's radar. However some businesses might never see the benefit, again I think it just depends on the business, the clients, and the location.

[Morgan Ramsay]

I think a better question would be, "Why shouldn't small businesses blog?"