A new report from e-Marketer is making the rounds online. At the hefty price of $695 (and I'm sure worth every penny), it's hardly in my budget.
Lucky for us though, the summary provides a telling overview of how important blogging is and will continue to be for the Indie Business owner. You can read it for yourself of course, but here's my take on the practical implications:
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FaceBook and Twitter are becoming more important to consumers. If you sell products to consumers, you need robust FaceBook and Twitter pages. I don't mean pages that sit there and squat on your name so no one else can have it. I mean professional pages that are regularly loaded with information that your customers value.
As Twitter, FaceBook (and other tools as they become available) empower your customers, you must empower yourself and your business to make it easy for people to choose you from the growing number of other options they will continue to have.
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The number of blogs is increasing. More people are starting blogs. We can presume from this that more people see the value of blogging because their blogs are producing positive results. This lets us know that choosing not to blog is an increasingly risky prospect for Indies. (Notice I said “choosing not to blog.” No Indie can say she doesn't know what a blog is anymore. It's a choice to ignore it now.)
Again, I'm not talking about simply having a blog. I'm talking about maintaining a blog — using it to populate the world with information and ideas that your customers value.
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The number of blog readers is increasing faster than the number of blogs. The fact that the number of people who read blogs is rising faster than the number of blogs is even more important for Indies to understand. What it means is that people are embracing THE BLOG as a legitimate way to gather and assess the information they need to enjoy their lives.
As more traditional media sources employ blogging, consumers will necessarily see it as a credible source — maybe even a credible news source. Don't you want to be seen that way? After all, if your customers
trust the information you share, they will also trust the products you offer.
The number of blogs is increasing. But the number of blog readers is increasing even faster.
If this trend continues, there will be fewer blogs for an increasing number of people to enjoy.
And that means that the Indies who blog will have a huge advantage over the ones who don't blog.
Question: Which category do you want to be in?
