You’re right about the power of blogging and you know that I am an advocate albeit an advocate who wants people to know the truth before committing themselves…

To be successful you have to work – however you drive the business.

I think your first line is a great qualifier when you say “marketing online”. Blogging forms the basis of my online marketing however online marketing forms only a part of my overall sales and marketing strategy.

If you look at the gurus in online marketing many of them do as much or more offline marketing as they do online. For sure, they drive people to their websites but they may do this through multiple other lead generation methods (for anyone reading and not thinking of many here are 98 lead generation strategies).

That said, blogging is a powerful and effective way to market and I firmly believe that everyone should have one and commit to it… but then they should also go to the gym, drive within the speed limits, eat healthy food, be nice to people, not argue with their partners…

Thanks for the plug.

I totally agree with you that blogging is only a tool and that it should form part of the marketing mix because, it’s not the only viable entry to marketing online.

I am going to be so bold as to say though that HTML is dying! Why? Because the blog software code is much cleaner and therefore makes it easier for the search engines to find. If your site is easier to find, it’s easier to index. If it’s easier to index, it’s also easier to get ranked.

Another reason is that blogs have become so much more versatile as a content managment system, they don’t have to be used merely for blogs. In other words, you can make a blog look entirely like a HTML website these days but with the benefit of being easier to update and maintain.

A third reason blogs have been hailed by so many marketers is the explosion of social media marketing.

If you market online, trying to do so in isolation will leave you with nothing more than an online brochure.

You have to participate and become as socially active online as you would if you were marketing offline and blogs make it easeir to so.

This is partly because of the inbuilt RSS feed but also adding video and audio to your site humanises it as does participating in social media marketing via Digg, StumbleUpon and Facebook, just to name a few, humanises your business.

One last reason why people should blog … if you don’t have a website up yet ask yourself how long it will take you to organise and put your website together. Conversely, with a blog, you could have a professional one up, like Gavin’s using here, in less than a week and be blogging about your products and services shortly after.

Gavin, you are doing all of the above which is the reason people find your blog online but I wholeheartedly agree with you that if you stopped your other marketing efforts, you would lose business.

Keep up the good blogging. It’s serving you well!

If you, like many people, try and do your blog without the effort posting poorly disguised sales copy with little value for the reader your dog could probably do a better job!