I Think, Therefore, I Blog (or Something Along Those Lines)

As a guy who hated term papers and always delayed college essays until the last possible moment — NoDoz and black coffee were my constant companions — I’m surprised to find myself blogging as much as I do.

I’ll admit that 10+ years of corporate SEO at a company that never appreciated SEO left me boiling over with frustration. I needed to vent. Now I can blog about those doofuses (among other things), and they can’t fire me.

But the real benefit, besides getting paid, is that blogging can clarify my thoughts and help me as much as the reader. It can do the same for you.

• Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the best orchestral colorists, wrote the definitive book on orchestration.
• Josef Albers, the Bauhaus artist, authored one of the great books on color theory.
• JS Bach composed the Well-Tempered Clavier, the “Old Testament” of the keyboard, as a pedagogical tool “for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study.”
• And Richard Feynman, one of the great physicists of the 20th century, was famous for his ability to communicate complex ideas.

Okay, so none of that amounts to my blogging, which is a much more significant contribution to society than Bach’s trifling tunes. Communicating what you do, and not just doing what you do, can make you a better doer.

Blogging makes you a sharper thinker. Some of the best digital marketers today are committed bloggers. At every SEO jamboree, content marketing specialists emerge from the woodwork, offering to share their knowledge with the world (up to a point).

How Blogging Crystallizes Your Thinking

What makes perfect sense in the dark recesses of your mind may end up as gibberish in a blog.

The act of writing forces you to articulate your thoughts. The process reveals contradictions in your reasoning and gaps in your knowledge.

It demands discipline with language. Dangling participles and comma splices are okay for tweets but look sloppy on a blog post.

Blogging reinforces the value of clarity and brevity, attributes lost on those of us stuck in the “more is more” school of writing or 1,000-word college essays. We think we’re adding clarity, but more often, we’re just adding stuff.

The greatest speech in American history, the Gettysburg Address, contained only 272 words. I’m at 400+ on this blog. Hey, look at me — I’ve outdone Lincoln!

Blogs Drive Huge Traffic for Our Clients

On some of the websites we manage at Culture Cube, blogs drive 80% of organic traffic.

“Yeah, but they’re all window shoppers,” you may object.

Most are, but not all, and since the blogs drive so much traffic compared to service pages (which compete with Google Map Pack results), they can outperform service pages in generating leads.

I’ll admit that, coming from a corporate environment where a failed blogging initiative wasted millions of dollars and never led to a penny in sales, I had a low opinion of business blogs in my early days at Culture Cube.

But the scales have fallen from my eyes — or have been shot away by the analytics — and I now see small business blogs for what they are. They’re a valuable resource for customers. They can build the authority and relevance of a business and drive traffic to a website that would otherwise starve for traffic.

The corporate blog was:

• Far too salesy
• Too self-centered
• Not especially useful
• Impossible to navigate

It failed because of poor execution. The C-suite executives who cooked up the whole thing should have blogged about it first to get their ideas straight.

Does Your Small Business Website Need a Blog?

Only if you can commit to it and do it right, unlike the C-suite execs.

A blog requires dedication and consistency — in quality, not necessarily quantity. You don’t have to write a daily post, but whatever you write should be worthwhile and aligned with your goals and message.

If you stay true to these principles, you should see more organic traffic from search engines and a boost in your leads.

And along the way, blogging can help define who you are and what you stand for as a company, and that’s worth more than the time it takes to write. Just ask Bach, Feynman, and Lincoln. Oh, sorry — you can’t. But you can listen to me.

And if you’d like to know more, we wrote an entire blog about small business blogging.

About Culture Cube Digital Marketing

Culture Cube specializes in digital marketing for local businesses. Our clients include plumbers, HVAC installers, appliance repair companies, and local newspapers.

We offer the expertise of a large agency at small agency rates.

Because we specialize, we’re better qualified to promote your small business and create the most effective campaigns.

We don’t waste client money on lavish offices, fancy equipment, costly business trips, and endless meetings. We pass our savings on to you and welcome you as a partner more than a client.

Please contact us to learn what we can do for you.