Although I find blogging to be a popular subject for many people to talk about, there are still a lot of businesses trying to figure out not only if there’s any kind of return on investment in doing it, as well as whether they have the time or the inclination to do it. I have a story that might be illuminating.

Mike Licht via Compfight

A few weeks ago I got an email out of the blue from someone wanting some consulting advice from another state. I sent her my phone number since it wasn’t included in her email (major lesson; always include all of your contact information in your business emails) and said she could call me the next day.

She did just that, and we talked for about 10 minutes about the possibility of my doing some work for her, work that would pay nicely. I asked her how she’d heard of me. She said that a friend had sent her some kind of newsletter that included a link to a blog post I’d written and that it intrigued her because it looked like something she needed for her company.

I asked her if she remembered which blog post it was and at the time she didn’t. She said that she’d find it and send it to me. When I got it I was surprised because it turned out to be a post I’d written almost 3 years earlier.

So, someone else liked my post, used it as inspiration in a post they wrote for a newsletter, put my link in it, someone else got it and liked it and forwarded it to a friend, and that friend liked it enough to call me. I had a shot at getting business out of it; unfortunately I didn’t get the contract. Still, I got connected because of something I wrote years earlier, but what did it really cost me at the time when I wrote that post?

I tend to write fast, so it might have taken me 5 to 10 minutes at the most to put it together, and it stayed on the blog for years; see what happened? Though I didn’t get the contract, I had a shot at it. Even if you don’t write as fast as I do (and truthfully most people don’t), the power of having content on your blog or anywhere else on social media is that something’s always around showing potential customers your expertise and experience in an area that they might have need of.

That’s not the only time something like that has happened for my benefit. Something more recently happened because of a YouTube video I created about 8 years ago. Instead of writing the story, let me share this video about the importance of creating content:

That’s the power of blogging and content creation; that’s why I talk about it all the time. You never know who might find your content and be impressed enough about it to contact you for business. Although it doesn’t happen on a daily basis, I get calls all the time requesting an audience with me for this or that, and sometimes I get paid for it. I hope you checked out the video because I highlighted a couple of things that show how blogging can help make you successful. All that and, if you create videos, you can embed them into your blog post like I’ve just done. 🙂

Of course, now I have to address the question I’ve seen about whether every business should have a blog or not and whether it can work for everyone. I recently addressed the point about having a website, but this is a slightly different animal. It’s a question that’s hard to answer easily, although it’s an easy answer.

The answers are thus:

* If you have consistent content, it can work for you;

* If you don’t it won’t work for you;

* If you can’t talk about what it is you do it won’t work for you;

* If you’re the only one who can do what you do in your area of expertise, no matter how small a business it is, it can work for you, but still refer to the first bullet;

* The same goes if there are a lot of other businesses doing what you do but few of them have a blog (I tell this one to accountants all the time, most of whom don’t have a blog);

* If you have a regular website that looks decent that you can associate your blog with it can help

My opinion is that if you can blog and you can talk about your business, or are willing to pay someone else to blog in your voice (ask me about that one), it’ll help more than it’ll hurt unless you stop writing or adding new content on a regular basis.

What are you waiting for? 😉