4 Compelling Reasons Why Your Startup Company Should Blog

Your budding startup needs to start blogging, but there’s a problem …

Fear.

Yep, many of the companies I work with have a fear of marketing and it relates to cash. This is because traditional marketing is expensive.

You may have hired someone to help with web design, copywriting, and overall branding, but paying a professional to build (and run) a long-term campaign? You don’t want to make that investment, do you?

I get it, traditional marketing is pricey and if it’s done poorly you might as well be flushing those greenbacks down the commode.

So, what is the answer?

How does a lean startup get the word out without taking more risk than is needed and gambling away your hard-earned marketing budget?

How does a startup company advertise and save money in the process? By building a blog.

And below are 4 Compelling Reasons Why Your Startup Company Should Blog, pronto …

1. Google Will Find You

I’m a fan of what Marcus Sheridan did for his company, River Pools and Spas.

If you don’t know the story, he and his partners helped bring back a company hit hard by the 2008 recession.

I won’t go into detail, but they started blogging by answering customer questions. Said questions were turned into posts built on honesty, filled with detail, and crafted with long tail keywords.

Marcus Sheridan’s philosophy? “They Ask, You Answer.”

River Pools and Spas was not a new company, but they were struggling and blogging changed everything. The site now dominates search in their industry, and the company is thriving.

It’s a model your company could emulate, and it might be what you need to get the search engine results you crave.

So start here …

a.) Bone up on long-tail keyword strategies.
b.) Take a closer look at your own business plan and begin your keyword plans there.
c.) Go through a positioning or naming or tagline exercise. You’ll be amazed how many topic ideas you might generate (even if you’re happy with your current name or tagline).
d.) Use the River Pools methodology and think about specific questions your ideal customer might ask.
c.) … then create an editorial calendar of posts.
d.) And if you’ve started the site creation process, make sure it’s going to be built with WordPress.

2. Blogging Becomes a Catalyst for Every Other Marketing Component

Think about it. If you take the time to go through the practices above and come up with 10 or 20 or 30 great posts, you have the start of something special.

You’ve heard of repurposing, right? Well, say one post is something like, “7 Trends in (your product area) Your Business Should Pay Attention To.”

With the above you’re not exactly hawking your product (good), but you are identifying trends potential customers should and will be interested in …

a.) You could expand on this and create an online brochure for download.
b.) You could then break down each into email form. Seven separate emails with more details, along with answers pointing to specific pages on your site.
c.) And this could be a launching pad for so much more …

• A new narrative that sharpens your site flow and structure.
• Magnetic copy built on the power of story.
• Or the ideas might lead to better sales letters, scripts for your sales department, and on and on.

Blogging is an amazing catalyst for marketing goodness! You NEED to get started.

3. Blogging Brings Your Brand Into Focus

Google sees you more clearly (read #1) and so do your potential customers.

If you’ve taken the time to clarify your brand up front, blogging will help refine it even more. This can’t be helped with the iterative nature of the process and trust me, this is good.

Why …

a.) Your brand is constantly in motion. You may have positioned your product or services like a master, but the more you write the more you’ll refine, like the artist spinning clay into a beautiful vase.

Spinning. Working. Refining.

Blogging keeps the process in motion, which is amazing on so many levels.

It’s like creative juice for your brand. Your website’s the blender, each new post a brilliant ingredient added to the mix.

b.) Your ideal customer sees your product (in a different light than your competitors). You’re bringing something new and exciting to the world and so is startup B. But startup B doesn’t have a blog. And even if they do have a blog, they might be going about it in the wrong way.

Get busy blowing the doors off startup B. (They’re slowpokes and they don’t get it).

4. It’s the Best Way to Find Your Brand Evangelists

Branding giants like Apple “move” customers in more ways than one.

And many successful small- and medium-sized companies do the same … They work to understand how people process, research, and purchase, then create a brand experience around that. This builds a feverish fan base that pimps the brand like crazy – we call this brand evangelism.

Here’s a quote from Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute:
“Content marketing is the practice of creating relevant and compelling content in a consistent fashion to a targeted buyer, focusing on all stages of the buying process, from brand awareness through to brand evangelism.”

Can’t argue with that.

Blogging is content marketing. If done right you might find more than a few people who will gladly tell the world what you have to offer.

There you go – Four big reasons why your startup company should blog.

I would say it’s time to get busy.

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