Why blog?

Sometimes I get in a blogging funk. Heck, just look at how often I've been posting to this thing! Sometimes I blog in a flurry, and then I ignore it for awhile. Sometimes I wonder why bother -- is there anybody out there?

Well, of course there are. Last night someone responded to a critique of the movie Happy Feet I wrote years ago on another of my blogs (a blog I haven't posted to since 2007!). That one little movie review occasionally inspires people to pop in to tell me how moronic my views were. And it proves that people do find you and are listening!

Today I saw this nice post on reasons to post -- even IF no one is listening to you. Here are my favorites:

1. Search engine benefits. This may be the most obvious business benefit of blogging. Search engines give preference to websites that have fresh, relevant content. HubSpot research shows that sites with blogs get 55 percent more traffic than sites without blogs—even if there are no readers! 

3. Infinite search life. A few weeks ago I received a call from a potential new customer in the Middle East looking to me as a possible marketing consultant. I had to wonder how in the world they found me! Turns out they were looking for somebody who could help explain where the future of social media was going, and when they entered this into Google, a blog post I wrote a year ago popped up! Your content keeps working for you month after month! 

8. PR. Blog posts have the opportunity for massive reach. When one of my posts gets picked up by an aggregation service, my message has a chance to be heard by hundreds of thousands of people. That opportunity would not occur with a press release or status update.