The roots
On October 18, I posted Gateway Blogging: A New Way to Look at Business Blogging. I made the video on October 7. But I’ve been trying to say this for nearly the whole time I’ve been blogging for entrepreneurs. I just needed a better name for it that described the premise in a way anyone could grasp at first listen.
Much well-intended advice about blogging is inappropriate for business blogs. I’m defining a business blog as a blog run by a business to further its goals. (As an aside, I happen to prefer to work with the growing ranks of freelancers, solo entrepreneurs, and small companies). If you want to make money directly from your blog, especially via advertising or affiliate sales, there are (way too) many sites online to help you with that. But if you’re selling products or services, the conventional wisdom for blogs in general either doesn’t apply or needs to be modified.
The conventional wisdom… isn’t
One common bit of advice is you need to leave comments on other blogs in order to increase traffic and get links to your own blog. Of course, that is true, and I am not suggesting you never comment… but when you’re running a business, spending time leaving comments on somebody else’s blog doesn’t make much sense when you could be billing a client over a hundred dollars an hour. That is just one specific example where the conventional wisdom isn’t so wise when it comes to the unique needs and challenges of business blogging. There are many more examples I could write about, but I think I’ve made my point with just this one. More of these in the future. The main point I’m trying to drive home with this is that the blog is supposed to be supporting the business — not the other way around! You can easily wind up in a situation where the tail is wagging the dog.
Business blogging grows up
My vision is to create a better framework for understanding, creating, and managing business blogs. You could call it “business blogging grows up.” I call it Gateway Blogging. Gateway Blogging is a descriptive analogy for the function and purpose of a business blog: to attract potential customers into a relationship with us that leads to repeat business and referrals over the long-term customer life cycle.
This is accomplished by blogging in a way that helps readers want to become your customers. In Gateway Blogging, you’re using your blog as a way to continuously help them envision success through your products or services. Your blog is the gateway through which visitors become readers, and then readers enter your sales funnel and become customers.
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I have much more to offer on this topic over the coming months, but not all of it will be here, nor will it be free (I’m putting together a new site and partnering up with an experienced business coach — more on this later). As I’ve continued to hone my message and articulate my vision on business blogging, people have begun to notice. My traffic and subscriber counts are increasing, as are the number of clients for my blog coaching & consulting services. I’m onto something.
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I love what you are getting at here. It is essential to remember that blogging is a means to an end – and always keep that end in mind. I think you are going to help a LOT of people with this series…
Definitely interesting to heard the words “gateway blogging”. Anyway, if most people understand the concept of a free content website business is actually in the business of generating LEAD business, they are in the better position to make some money online.
Ken, you have it exactly right. It’s all about lead-generation and moving people further into the sales funnel.
[...] my concept of Gateway Blogging, there are 2 main types of [...]