Blogs and What's In It For Me?

I saw a writer on a board ask about blogs and focus on the question, "What's in it for me?" It seems logical enough: you only have so much time for your marketing, and you have to decide what to pursue. But I think the logic quickly breaks down, because the question is wrong.

There is a fundamental flaw when you look at marketing and keep asking what the benefit to you is. Marketing doesn't provide a dollars and cents bottom line that you can bank. In marketing, you reach out to people that you can help and offer them products and services that they would want. The activity should be focused on the customer, not on the provider. The profit you make is a byproduct of how well you serve the needs of your customers. If you do that well, you can make money. But if you want every conversation to be about you and your needs, it gets a lot harder. It's tiresome to talk to someone who is that narcissistic.

In a blog, you can't count on getting sales or anything else. You might as well say that you write books only to promote yourself and to make more money in other activities. While a book might become part of a platform, if you've written a single one you know that that must be more to it than that.

For example, blogging about finding a topic you care for, writing about it, coming across other people who are also interested and want to hear what you have to say - and who want to say something back. It's building relationships with people in the context of the one topic.

If that turns into business, fine. If not ... well, then it doesn't. Blogging can make sense as marketing if you think that real marketing is building relationships. If that is your focus - if you want to find people and reach out to them because you have something to offer - then a blog can be marvelous, though it takes time to establish. You have the perfect opportunity to become your own publisher, to avoid large media as intermediary, and to find your own audience.