To Have Great Bloggers, You Must Have Great Readers, Too!

Long before corporate blog writing became the centerpiece for conveying a business’ message to potential customers, none other than poet Walt Whitman understood the importance of connectivity in SEO marketing blogs.

“To have great poets,” Whitman asserted, “there must be great audiences, too.”

As I consistently stress when offering business blogging assistance, blog are not only for reading, but for acting, reacting, and interacting. In other words, in the world of corporate blog writing, it’s not enough to be a “poet”.  You have to have readers.  “Your personal brand visibility is made up of your search engine ranking and how many eyeballs physically see your content each day,” explains Chad Levitt (quoted on P. 150 of Branding Yourself).

Great audiences, though, must bring more than just their eyeballs to our clients’ websites, as we Indianapolis freelance bloggers know, and being “influential” online means a whole lot more than being found.  Blogging for business has to mean business, which means “having the ability to push your followers and friends to action”, as Levitt explains, and that action needs to be in accordance with the business’ personal branding plan.

There’s more than one reason for using the blog writing process to build great readership:

Backlinks – The more links pointing back to a blog, the more importance search engines will attribute to that blog.  “Blogging is about community.  Don’t expect people to read your blog if you aren’t reading and commenting on theirs,” tweets @Justheather.  So right – leaving comments on other people’s blogs and writing about those other people will, sooner or later, Heather suggests, get them to write to and about you.

Richer content – The lesson I try hardest to impart in corporate blogging training sessions is: “The more you know, the more you can blog about”.  Business content writing in blogs is the result of a lots of reading and listening on the part of the blogger.

Decades ago, poet Walt Whitman knew that a key element in effective poetry writing was the cultivation of great audiences to enjoy that poetry.  The right kind of readers – (those with an interest in your topic who value your products and services and are willing to pay for them), are the “great blog audiences” every business owner and professional practitioner wants to attract!