Thursday, February 12, 2009

Blogging For Your Business

If you follow my blog, thank you.

But why do I do it? I do it for a few reasons.

1) It keeps me sharp, I read and review mountains of stuff every day, some is good and some is not worth the time or effort (to me) to do anything with. My pile of stuff of unfinished articles and information is a paper salesman’s dream.

2) It is an advertising tool. Yes I do get business off of the blogs I put out. I use a soft sell and give hard and fast facts and ideas so that if someone wants to go off and do it themselves fine. Go for it. This is not brain surgery even if I have been in the advertising/marketing industry for over 30 years. There are rules to follow, because they work but you can do this.

3) I use what I write. Doing this forces me to try things out. Experiment, Play. I know I don’t have all the answers. I know I don’t know all the tools that are out there so I need to keep looking searching, trying experimenting and then the rules keep changing on me so why not go out and have some fun in this crazy world of promotion.

Now if you want to venture into the world of blogging in any way shape or form keep reading and think before you write:

1) Blogging is somewhat of a fad! That doesn’t mean there isn’t any long-term value or that it will disappear soon or ever. There is a large growth of the blogosphere and I seem a lot of people who will stop soon. Blogging does have long term value and blogging will be a useful and valuable tool for a long time to come. But keep it in its place and perspective

2) You can’t just go out and blog on whatever you think is cool and exciting and expect to build a large long term audience. You need to keep focused. You need to keep nitched into the area you know and can keep writing about. If you are already famous, you might be an exception. If you’ve got millions of raving fans, yes, you can blog on whatever you want and they’ll read it. However you’ll never build millions of raving fans this way. So you will need to pick a focus for your blog and stick to it in order to succeed.

3) Don’t give up your day job to blog. Less than 1% of bloggers will do blogging fulltime and professionally, and those that do will spent time on blog related activities you might not consider “real blogging,” like dealing with advertising, joint ventures, creating info products, etc., you know, business stuff. Blogging can be a business, whether you blog fulltime for yourself, as a paid staff writer for a blog network, or even if you just make a few extra bucks from your own blog. Don’t count on blogging paying the bills. It’s just not going to happen.

Larson note: I like what I do and blogging lets me enjoy it even more. I tell my people that if they are not offered a new job by someone once a month they are not doing a good enough job. Even I get offers, and own the place.

The only other point I would put in is that if you cannot bog at least 3 times a week you will never gather a following. Maybe my 5 to 15 times a week is excess, but then this is My Blog.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Twice a week we offer 2 free ½ hour consultations for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

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