3 Purposes of Blogging

In this age of social media and hyper-competitive SEO, there’s nothing quite like a blog for boosting your overall digital footprint. A blog can help you connect with potentially legions of people who are searching for exactly the kind of solution your company exists to provide.

If you’re new to blogging, it might seem daunting. What should you write about? How should you approach it? Alternatively, it may be tempting to simply generate boilerplate content that will push one up the rankings with the Google bots.

As a freelance writer, I spend a lot of time finding and using information from books, articles, scientific studies, and government documents. What I’ve found is that some information and some sources stand head and shoulders above the competition.

With this in mind, I’d like to offer what I see as the three main purposes of blogging. If you keep these purposes in mind, you’ll probably find it much easier to craft meaningful, compelling content that will connect with people who might be interested in what you have to offer.

Purpose #1: Blogging Provides Information People Want

Think fast: what problem do you exist to solve?

We’re all in the business of solving problems for other people. As Matt Ridley explains in The Rational Optimist, the entire logic of civilization is specialization: I’ll solve one problem for you and anyone else who has that problem, and you’ll do the same with a different problem.

This is, in brief, how we went from a world of self-sufficient hunter-gatherer bands to a post-industrial, service-sector-heavy civilization. What this means is that people are coming to you because you have knowledge, skills, and capacities that they do not possess.

The beauty of a well-managed blog is that it can help them to find you. It’s your very own digital storefront, a free preview of the remarkable knowledge and skill you’ve built up in your field. Give people information they’re looking for, and they’re likely to be quite interested and engaged.

Of course, if they’re interested and engaged, they’re likely to take more notice of you — and that brings us to the second purpose.

Purpose #2: Blogging Establishes You as An Authority

You have a problem, and you need to solve it fast. A quick Google search offers a vast sea of results. How do you narrow them down?

Of course, the logical thing to do is to look at the top results. Blogging can certainly help you here: more blog entries means more content, and more chances to rank high in a particular keyword search.

But there’s something more to it than that: if you have a relatively active blog that covers different aspects of the problem you’re solving, it will make you seem more credible and authoritative than someone who has no blog, or a fairly inactive one with a few generic, boilerplate posts.

Let’s say you were looking to buy a house for the first time. Knowing practically nothing, you Google local realtors. Now, imagine going through professional realtors’ sites, and trying to decide who to contact.

Would an active blog with entries on various aspects of the home-buying process do anything to affect your decision? Let’s say it addresses everything from common misconceptions about escrow to lead abatement and radon concerns. Would a realtor with such a blog seem more authoritative and credible than one without?

People pay attention to information, not only quantity but also quality. Blogging is your opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and establish yourself as a credible authority. And over time, that credibility can pay off.

Purpose #3: Blogging Exposure Leads to Sales

If people come to see you as an authority on a given subject, they are more likely to buy from you, particularly as a consequence of repeated exposure to your brand.

There’s an actual psychological phenomenon here, the so-called mere exposure effect or familiarity principle. In essence, people develop a preference for familiar things. Novelty can be fun and stimulating, but it can also be risky and daunting. Familiarity means dependability.

Even if you are a person who enjoys trying new things and seeing new places, ask yourself whether you’ve ever tried a brand after repeat exposure. In this digitally-interconnected age, most of us have probably tried something after seeing multiple online ads for it, and perhaps having one or more friends recommend it to us as well.

People are social, and as social creatures we tend to follow the lead of others. The mere effect of repeat exposure can make us want to try a new brand of mattress, mail-order razors, or cloud backup (to use examples taken from a couple of different podcasts).

The beauty of blogging, then, is that it generates so many opportunities for people to find you, become interested, and then develop enough of a sense of familiarity to feel comfortable buying.

For more about how I can help you create quality content to promote your brand, please contact me here on LinkedIn or by email at mikeschultheiss@gmail.com.