Blogging into the Black Hole of Cyberspace

If you’ve seen the movie Julie & Julia you know what is possible with blogging.

A young woman (played by Amy Adams) diligently cooks her way through Julia Child’s cookbook – 365 days, 524 recipes – and blogs about the experiences as she goes. In time she becomes frustrated by the experience, feeling as though her words are disappearing into a black hole of internet nothingness.

“Is anybody even reading what I write?” she whines to her live-in boyfriend.

Suddenly, there’s a heartbeat. She starts getting written responses to her postings, and packaged foods start arriving in the mail. The blog catches fire. It becomes the subject of a major Hollywood movie and a landmark performance by Meryl Streep and her rendition of Julia Child.

Things have changed since then. It was an earlier time in the blogosphere’s evolution, a time when a good blog could grow organically. Today, with literally millions of inveterate bloggers pounding out billions of words, such stories of organic blog growth are rarer.

Still, it’s no reason to forsake your blog. Readership isn’t everything. That argument was made some time ago by Mark Schaefer of Schaefer Marketing Solutions when he wrote the article 10 reasons to blog even if nobody reads it. Here is Schaefer’s reasoning.

1. Search engine optimization. This may be the most obvious business benefit of blogging. Search engines give preference to websites that have fresh, relevant content. Hubspot research shows that sites with blogs get 55 percent more traffic than sites without blogs — even if there are no readers.
2. Marketing differentiation. Finding a way to stand-out may be the most difficult chore a business faces. Do your competitors have a blog? If not, this might be an opportunity to establish the voice of authority in your marketplace and enhance your image with customers.
3. Infinite search life. A few weeks ago I received a call from a potential new customer in the Middle East looking to me as a possible marketing consultant. I had to wonder how in the world they found me. Turns out they were looking for somebody who could help explain where the future of social media was going and when they entered this into Google, a blog post I wrote a year ago popped up!  Your content keeps working for you month after month.
4. An inexpensive sales call. You might not be able to visit your customer every week or every month but a blog is an excellent way to provide a constant drip-drip-drip of communication to remind them of your products, services, and why you’re special.  If they don’t read your blog, re-purpose the content in customer newsletters and sales materials.
5. Your content reservoir. Your investment in a consistent stream of quality content can be leveraged in many ways to support a content marketing strategy. I use links from blog posts to answer customer questions, as the basis for speeches, newsletter content, and as reading assignments for workshops.
6. Direct sales. Sure, you can sell through your blog.  Software giant SAP does a great job advertising training services in a sidebar on its blog. This is valuable real estate. Why not use it?  Wegman’s grocery store employees blog about seasonal recipes and show how to use their food products in new ways.
7. Indirect sales. Featuring blog-only promotions and offers or opt-in content can expose new sales leads.
8. PR. Blog posts have the opportunity for massive reach. When one of my posts gets picked up by an aggregation services, my message has a chance to be read by hundreds of thousands of people. That opportunity would not occur with a press release or status update.
9. New product development. Many companies use blogs as a way to engage customers to solve problems and create new ideas. Caterpillar has blogs dedicated to each major product line. Starbucks blogs about customer ideas as a way to crowd-source new product innovation.
10. Crisis management. A blog is an essential channel to explain the facts amid chaos. In less than an hour after the earthquake hit Haiti, the Red Cross blog had news of its activities and information on how to donate.  Company responses through blogs are often quoted by mainstream news sources.

Some excellent points from Mr. Schaefer. Alas, an estimated half of all blogs are fallow, having been abandoned by owners who succumbed to the Black Hole of Cyberspace. Many more rarely post articles.

Don’t feel isolated. If nothing else, cyberspace is full of web crawlers that index your website and blog and make that information available through search engines to people the world over. Blog assiduously and you never know who will show up at your virtual doorstep.

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