What is the purpose of your blog?

[DTGeorge]

Blogs have a wide range of purposes - from demonstrating expertise to engaging with an audience to gaining leads, blogs can be a useful and critical strategy in marketing your business.

What I want to know is: how many of you have a defined purpose for your blog? What do you use your blog to do? What are the issues/challenges that you face when blogging?

[vangogh]

Oddly enough I wrote a post last year about why I blog (http://www.vanseodesign.com/blogging/motivation/). Details are in the post, but here are the 7 reasons I offered.


I enjoy writing
Writing improves design
To give back to the community
Blogging helps me learn and grow
Blogging is good for marketing and seo
Blogging can lead to new business models
It’s part of how I multi-task


When I initially started it was mainly for marketing reasons, but over time the reasons have grown. Now it serves all of the above and if you ask me again in a couple of years I might be able to add more reasons.

Demonstrating expertise to engaging with an audience to gaining leads are all things that have happened through my blog. I've gained clients through, made friends, and more recently I'm using it as a platform to help sell products.

[OlegLola]

I think that the one of the most important thing is to feel what your audience really wants to see in your posts. And the only way to find it out is to ask your readers about it. That's why we conduct the surveys from time to time to get the feedback from our audience, which helps to improve the quality of the material in the blog (http://mobidev.biz/blog.html).

[MissLettaC]

I want my blog to provide information over a broad spectrum. I really dont want to be stuck in one niche. I want people to be able to get all types of information from me. I guess the only issues I face is coming up with decent content and then driving traffic to it. So right now I am using my blog to inform, inspire and possibly change someones life.

<Please set up a signature through Settings>

[KristineS]

Our blogs are for education, to help our customers use our products better and more efficiently, and to help them learn about our company.

[Harold Mansfield]

I've had a few blogs and each was specific to a certain niche or subject matter. I've had a political blog, a music blog, a current events blog and others.
The blog on my website was to offer specific tips to clients about running their website.

I have since realized that my clients don't read anything that has to do with running their website, and I have no interest in writing for a general audience. So at the moment I'm not blogging regularly.

My interest in writing is sporadic. The things I like writing about don't make me money and I don't have the time to blog for fun.

So right now as far as blogging is concerned, I'm in limbo.

[patrickprecisione]

I would say that SEO is sort of a side benefit, the main reason to blog is to give good content to potential customers. By extension you'll be labeling yourself as an expert in your field.

[Qmind]

There are a few reasons, one being SEO, it can help with your ranking in google. Just because you have a blog does not guarantee you will be ranked because there are several other factors that come into play.

I also use it to provide useful information to clients, potential clients, or anyone looking to learn. Plus, I enjoy writing and use it as an outlet.

[ryantc]

Reasons why a company should have a blog.
A blog provides a low-cost, long-term venue to continuously bring your brand to life.
Provides an informative resource for anyone seeking information about you or an issue relating to your brand.
Social media and blogs are the fastest growing category in lead generation.
You can invite guests: clients, thought leaders and industry gurus to write guest articles.

[marrick]

I use blogging in order to provide something in a certain situation. I also use it as part of my marketing strategy because I am able to get people attention by determining their situations and provide something that will help them.

[LeadMaster]

We share software updates so customers stay up to date with latest changes and additions.

[mymobe]

My blog is about business and health.
How to work both hand in hand and
offer businesses that they can join or be an affiliate
or even buy products
I like to help people get better both
financially and healthier

[techdis7]

Our blog is to educate the people about the services, products and trends in your market.

As people want lots of information before making any decision, whether its b2b or b2c. By reading your blog, audience get to know about the benefits of the services/products, what is trending in the niche market?

[TejasWebHosting]

Yes, it educates people but it helps you (the blogger) become more active in the community and relations in your specific field! I think its a great idea, we included a blog on our site it does create a sense of involvement.

[girlymcnerdy]

I ran a successful blog a few years back and blogged for Education. I'm taking putting a new spin on it this time around! Instead of blogging for my readers, I'm going to blog for myself. I'm going to use it as a way to get down on "paper" what is floating around inside my lobes. 0_0

Today's post was more about age motivation in entrepreneurship. (I'm turning 32...no wait...33 on Sunday.)

[Inkable Label Co.]

Blogs are great because this is where you can add value to your brand. Definitely this helps with SEO, but more importantly this is a venue for open discussions with your customers as well as an great way to supplement your services and products.

It is all about building long-term relationships and gaining visibility on the web. Posts can serve as a bulletin board (new products announcement, improvements/developments in processes, introducing new staff on board with a certain expertise, etc.), a nice way to increase traffic while sustaining new business relationships (with planned and aligned content, guest blogging is definitely a win-win situation), content that will help your customers fully enjoy your products or services (i.e. if you sell healthful drinks, a post about top 10 quick and easy morning exercises is an outreach post that perfectly matches with your brand benefits). It really is a powerful tool!

[rijalda]

I run several online blogs - most are in forms of reviews and tutorials.

Depending on your needs, you can start a profitable blog for a few dollars per month.

[LarsJ]

It shows potential clients and various visitors that you are an expert in your field. You know your industry well and not just selling stuff with a price tag. Also, you will learn things as you continue writing and keep adding more content.

[Tractus]

The purpose of the blog is to:
Educate business owners and entrepreneurs on how to promote and market their business online
Inform our readers about recent trends in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing etc.
Share our experience and new findings in web development and web design
Become a trustworthy source of information in the industry

[Kumar Palani]

To me the most important part of blogging is to prepare a schedule and stick to it. We often write several amazing blogs in a short time, but this almost forget or ignore it. A blogging schedule should be prepared say; 3 blogs per week or month, and 4 different purpose (type of blogging) and 3 different categories of topics to cover. If preplanned well, blogging can be done effectively.

My aspect of blogging is to showcase domain skills and attract potential leads. This works only after a pool of audience is created and maintained.

[WPCarer]

Our blog is to help our clients/potential clients with their WordPress issues, plus it establishes us as an authority on WP so is good marketing! Some of the struggles can be thinking of new topics to write on that are original, or finding the time when there are other forms of online marketing to be done, but i think it will pay off in the long-run!

Iseult

[jacob@finserveusa.com]

I always struggle to find that burst of creative energy myself.

[Wantboards]

Our blog aims to help people shop smarter and save money. By providing helpful content, we hope to become a reliable source of shopping knowledge, and well as an outlet for helping our users get better deals :)

[veritasvisions]

The main purpose of your blog is three fold

1) Seo- the more content you write with relevent keywords that people engage with, the higher you rank
2) Get people to know like and trust you by providing them with things they can actually utilize
3) Capture leads via opt in pages. If you aren't using your blog to capture emails, you are just not doing it right.

[99social]

We use blogs to demonstrate the expertise of our clients. We like to offer information that solves a problem for our targeted audience, and then link back to our services as an easier route.

[Ola Rybacka]

Our blog is leading by few people with different point of view on our niche, so we provided various types of content.
All of them are linked by the passion, because we want to share high quality and valubale posts and help people draw inspirtation about our area.

[PHCProducts]

For my eCommerce business my blog is an opportunity to draw traffic to the website while adding value for people researching the products I sell and for professionals to learn a bit more about their applications.

[Ola Rybacka]

Our company blog is a place when we can share our knowledge and experience about our business niche. It's also a place where we post news about product updates, short guides and "how-it-works" tips.
It's definitely helpful for all the SEO issues. We treat it as one of the communication ways as well.

[daveM]

My blog serves two purposes.....one being to learn how to do SEO as I plan to have a small ecommerce site in the future. Second purpose is to share my knowledge of my occupation with aspiring traders.

[MosheC]

My blog started off as tips for small businesses. And is quickly evolving to The mindset you need to have to run your business. I collect information from all over the web, as well as my experience. And presented to my readers in the easiest way I can think of. As far As challenges, my blog is less than two months olds I haven't run into any. I hope this helps.