We often get asked, why are we blogging?

Why blog particularly when we are busy, when blogging is time consuming, isn’t directly related to sales and isn’t always specifically about the technicals of our craft?

A simple question with both a long and a short answer:

The long answer has multiple components:

• Paying it forward. My marketing worldview has been transformed more by one man’s daily blog than almost any other education, training, reading, courses, conferences etc I’ve taken part in. Blogging is our small way of paying this incredible favour forward and giving value back to the world.
• While you teach, you learn. The surest way to find out if you really understand something is to teach someone else. At the start of this year, we made a commitment to blog daily. This daily discipline has forced us over time to crystalise why we do what we do (and express this uniquely in our own words) better than any arbitrary branding session could have – and probably saved us tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
• Creative fitness. Creativity is a muscle. Just like our health, the way to stay fit creatively is to exercise regularly. Making the commitment to blog daily, makes one very aware that one has to ‘deliver the goods’ for others very soon so we are forced to be ‘listening’ constantly, finding ourselves operating out of a heightened sense of awareness. Its only when you’re fit that you truly realise how out of shape you were when you weren’t exercising. Just like physical fitness benefits every area of one’s life, we’ve found Creative Fitness translates to benefits across every area of our agency.
• Team culture. As all of our team are subscribed, blogging aligns our entire team daily and gives us the same language and mindset to use and culture to promote internally. Blog posts often become a spark for team discussions – which then fuel further blog posts!
• Adds value for Clients. As we encourage all our clients to subscribe, blogging also allows us to provide added value to our clients over and above the day to day work we do for them. It also gives clients additional thoughts and ideas that may not necessarily come up in meetings – essentially extending our client relationships from being focussed just on what we’re paid to do, to other daily subjects of interest that may also bring added value. Similar to our internal team culture, blogging ‘warms’ clients to our mindset and language – which may be difficult and overwhelming to try and do in a monthly meeting.
• Practise what we preach. We write a lot about the newfound ability the Connection Economy gives to Brands to take followers on a journey of becoming. Blogging is us putting those words into action. While we trust that every subscriber may have learned a tactic or two with their PPC advertising, more importantly, we hope every reader has noticed the way they view the online world has changed – they have become a different person, over time. If this happens, regardless of whether each reader engages our services or not, that is its own reward.

The short answer is far simpler and is the core reason we would encourage everyone (clients, staff, friends) to blog:

Blog from love not for love.

Give the world the love you already have for your craft, your niche, your interest, your followers.

And don’t worry if/how we respond – changing who you are based on our reaction isn’t what we need.

What the world needs now is love.