A blog could make your company's voice heard. Really heard.

You know people from your company read blogs. You might read blogs. You know blogs are really trendy and though you don’t understand why exactly people read them, you know they’re important. You know there’s not necessary news, nor expert opinion, but some articles are really good and they are really coherent and all those ideas are enjoyed by people. And you see companies tend to have blogs and write about stuff, though there’s no logical explanation why someone should waste time writing on a blog, especially when some of the articles are not related to what those companies do. Should your company start a blog? I believe so. Let’s see why.

I’ll try to make a list of reasons why companies should blog. And when I say companies I don’t mean startups or small companies, I mean big corporations just as well. I believe in online communication and, most of all, I believe in cheap and efficient online communication. And that is what a blog means to a company: easy and cheap communication. An online voice for your company, a voice to spread the information you want to be heard by your potential clients.

1. It’s free (or at least really cheap)

   Building a blog for your business won’t cost you a penny. Just download WordPress, install it and start writing. It’s that simple. WordPress has built-in SEO capabilities, so the search engines will index your articles as soon as you start writing. What is going to cost you though, is the blog theme. If you have a serious business, you’ll need a personalized image, with visual elements from your company’s website. That’s a must.
   But that’s not a big problem. You can find a premium theme and pay someone to customize it or you can just pay someone to design the theme from scratch. Costs? Somewhere between $100 to maximum $2,000. Why is the second limit so high? It depends on what kind of features you want to include. But if it’s a simple custom theme built from scratch, that can cost you as low as $300.

2. Anyone can write

   And when I say anyone, I don’t mean any guy that has access to a computer. I mean anyone from your company, people from your PR or marketing department or even you. Of course, if you want to show off and let people see how cool is your company, you can even let your employees speak their mind to the public.

3. It requires few resources

   What exactly do you need to start a blog? A cheap hosting account. Of course, you don’t actually need a hosting account as long as you have a website. You just need a subdomain and a MySQL database account. 100 MB of space are more than enough and a bandwidth limited to 5 GB a month is perfectly fine for a blog in the first two to four years. Well, maybe you’ll close your blog or maybe you’ll enjoy it. But remember that as long as you don’t upload movies or huge photos, everything is going to be alright and you won’t have to pay more than necessary.

Here comes the best argument:

“But why should I start a blog?” Because it’s better to let the world know your side of the story

It’s cool when people talk about your products. But it’s not that cool when they’re speaking loud the bad and the ugly. So why not let them speak about you exactly what you want them to talk about? Writing on a blog means you’re open to communicate and that’s what people want. Show your customers that you’re open to talk about everything they want to talk about and you’ll be above them. They will admire your courage.

Though internet has grown and lots and lots of companies start blogging, there are few that actually talk to their customers. If you show them respect, they’ll show you fidelity. They will buy from you because they know you listen to their problems and you are trying to make your products better, according to their expectations. They trust you more than your competition.

Talking isn’t cheap. It’s free

Blogging is how you make people stick with you and not run to the competition

Let your marketing and PR people do the talking. That’s why you pay them, right? Let them make the buzz. It’s in their job description, remember? Let them speak for you. If you do that and they convince the people you’re really interested in emproving your products according to their hopes, your clients will stick with you and they’re going to become the ones to deliver your message forward.

You just have to be friendly and make sure that your company’s relationship with the customers is based on friendship. Because it’s friends the ones that carry on your message to their friends. And by all means, keep the friendship. Because word-of-mouth will always be the number one way to add new clients. People trust people. Give your business a human face.