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Why Blogging Is Still Important For Consultants

By crooky | February 15, 2008

There has been some talk lately that blogging (as an activity) has declined in recent years in favour of Facebook, Twitter and other forms of tagging/microblogging. These new platforms add even more chatter to the litterally millions of active blogs so the signal to noise ratio makes getting new blogs noticed a real challenge. In my Blogging for Business course that I teach at UBC, I have some figures that I share with my students:

  • There are 100,000 new blogs created every day.
  • Technorati is tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
  • The “blogosphere” is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
  • 8% of Internet users keep a blog.
  • 39% of Internet users read blogs.
  • 90% of bloggers say they have read someone else’s blog.

    • I still believe in the power of blogs and would suggest that for small consulting firms (like mine), they handily take the place of news releases and allow businesses to grow their web presence. I’m so committed to the blog platform that I’m spending February 22 and 23 at Northern Voice 2008 where myself and several hundred other Vancouver-based bloggers will be discussing the future of the medium.

    I’ll tell you one thing - before I started my new blog in late 2007, when you searched my name, my business web site didn’t even come up on the top 10 results.Now that I have a site which is search engine optimized and has new content 3-4 times a week, my business site is the #1 google result when you search my name and it’s brining in some ongoing traffic for a few specific topics I’ve written about.

    Here’s how I have leveraged blogs to my advantage:

    1. By having regular content updates and using Google Analytics, I am getting a higher page rank than I did before.

    2. By being an active member of a few online communities (Digg, FreelanceSwitch) I have driven traffic to my site in modest but noticeable chunks.

    3. It shows potential customers that my business isn’t a “side of the desk” thing for me. I work at my business every day and I have invested my time and money into ensuring its success.

    My Google Analytics Results for Feb 14 08

    The chart I’ve shown above is a screen capture from my Google Analytics report. It shows all the traffic I’ve gotten in the last month. So far, my reader base is about 300 people - 50 of whom are regular readers (thank you!). I saw some traffic spikes which I’ve flagged in red on the chart. The name drop related to an article in which I mentioned another consultant and his work. Him and his colleagues were all over my post within hours of it going up. It was amazing. The feedback was good too.

    The DIGG spike was in regards to a posting I wrote about the potential for Canada to use windmills to meet its Kyoto commitments. My article got posted by someone in the comments section of an article that made the Digg top list and about 30 new people came to my site.

    After that, I had a bunch of new visitors - I’m guessing because of my posting as an attendee on the Northern Voice Wiki.

    Finally, a few days ago, a report that I helped write for another blog - FreelanceSwitch - went out to about 3700 people. My name and my website link were all over that report and it’s brought an additional 100 visitors to my site this month. I’ve only been pro-blogging for three months and while I believe it takes up to six months to develop a following, I believe that I’ve made a great start.

    I hope this posting has convinced you that there is some merit in being an active blogger and participating in the online community. Blogging isn’t dead - it’s just matured.

    *********************
    Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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    Topics: Business of Consulting |

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