Remember the movie Julia & Julia? The young Julia aspires to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook in 365 days, a challenge she shares via blogging. In the beginning she remarks that the only person reading her blog is her mother. In the end she is offered multiple book deals. A Cinderella story for sure – but based on a true-to-life event.

Today, when asked what social media platform they wanted most to master, 62% of marketers said blogging. And I encourage all my clients to consider having a blog on their website.

The excuses I get usually run in the vein of…“I’m not a writer”…      “I just have a product to sell — I don’t want to talk about myself…or “I really don’t have anything to say…”

I explain that there are multitudes of ways to use a blog besides “talking about yourself”. You can use it to post videos, or photos, or share a link to another blog or interesting article…it doesn’t even have to look like a blog   (I promise to address this in more detail in another…yes–blog). In fact, I have one client who uses her blog as a way to post upcoming events for her art gallery. Get creative!

Some people are convinced they won’t get any comments. Did you know that there are big name brands out there with blogs that get ZERO comments – yet they are still blogging away. They must realize some value from them – right?
Yep – you can bet they do.

And here are just a few of the top reasons why others utilize this tool and I encourage my clients to do the same:

Search Engine Benefits: This is probably the most obvious benefit of blogging, yet many people don’t understand it. Hubspot research shows that sites with blogs get 55% more traffic than sites without blogs — even if there are no readers! Why? You see, search engines give preference to websites that have consistently new and fresh, relevant content. That’s where the blog comes in. Every time you post a new blog — voila — new, fresh content!

PR: Blog posts have the potential for massive reach. If one of your posts should get picked up by an aggregation service, there is a chance that your message might be read by hundreds of thousands of people. That opportunity would probably never occur with a press release or status update.

Infinite Search Life: Every time someone types in a phrase online to search for a topic, there is the possibility that one of your blog titles may come up in the search results – even if you wrote the blog a year ago! Your content keeps working for you day after day, month after month.

Now that you have some facts…are you motivated to consider having a blog?