To blog or not to blog, that is the question!

Seems like such a simple question, right? Those that have a blog (which is a web journal or web log… shortened to “blog”) will tell you that you should have a blog and those that don’t will tell you they’re useless.

Now I’ll admit, I’ve gone back and forth on this question, too. During my book tour, I added items relevant to what was going on in my world at the time. I’ll admit, I had a lot of hits on my blog with a lot of interaction with the readers. But after my tour, it was something I would only post to occasionally.

Working my blog from one extreme to the other didn’t really help keep my following either. But, I’m not so sure these readers were my audience, though. Most of my readers were those wanting to engage in conversation, but not necessarily about anything from a positive note.

So, you would probably assume my answer would be no… a blog is not useful for business. But to the contrary, I do believe blogs can be very useful in driving business my direction and help my site rank higher in the search engine rankings. But, this will only happen if you develop your strategy first.

Here’s what I mean – my blog was reflective of the platform I used on my book tour (which was about becoming famous). Had I used the same efforts to attract a different type of audience, I do believe it would have been more effective.

But, here’s the fact… you must look at a blog as a tool and add content your audience finds valuable.

I also think you should share your own personal style in each posting. Think back to Doogie Howser, M.D. on TV. After each episode, Doogie would type in his daily journal his reflections (and lessons learned) from that day.

Do this and you’ll hit gold!

Cheers…
Carm

(For those of you that don’t remember his show – the early years for Neil Patrick Harris, here is the link to the site: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doogie_Howser,_M.D.)