Blogs – One Click Away From Colossal

When it comes to blogs, staying small may be the best recipe for business growth.  For one thing, to be an effective marketing tool for your business, your blog must aim at a specific segment of the market.  That’s why, in Blogs And Podiums – Choose Yours Wisely!, I advised selecting just one area of focus.  That’s likely to be a lot more effective than trying to tell blog readers about everything you do and everything you have to offer.

When I think of the blogosphere, I picture a giant highway, with blog posts being the billboards on the sides of the road.  When it comes to billboards, I’m reminded, there are laws about those.  Last summer, for example, both the zoning board of the city of Anderson, Indiana and the Indiana Department of Transportation got involved when a gigantic electronic billboard was being put up to advertise the new Hoosier Park "racino". The Department of Transportation, I learned, regulates how often the video screen on a digital billboard can change.  The location of the billboard itself, specifically its distance from the road, was dictated by the zoning board rules.

To some degree, when it comes to blogging, the readers are your regulators. Your blog "billboard" calls attention to areas of your business you want to highlight or showcase.  If the blog is too long, no regulator will show up to fine you, but readers will quickly navigate away from the site. 

Your parents and grandparents will recall how, in years past, you’d go into a store to buy, say, a fine cigar or perhaps a fur coat. The proprietor, in order to make you feel you were a special customer whose business he prized, would have you wait a moment while he went to the back to get his very best merchandise.  The idea is to keep your blog content short, inviting browsers to learn more by clicking through to "the best stuff" kept back at your website!

Blogging maven Meryl K. Evans advises, "Save your longer stuff for newsletters.  Readers want to get to the heart of the matter and get out."