Who Foots The Bill For Blogs?

If it’s true, as Chris Baggott, CEO of Compendium Blogware stresses in webinars and white papers, that only 5-15% of business conducted online comes about as the result of
pay-per-click advertising or paid sponsorships, why do search engines reward blogging and give us business bloggers all that “free space” in which to strut our stuff across the runways of the blogosphere?

Elementary, my dear Watson.  Search engines such as Google attract advertisers by bringing visitors who have come to rely on Google as the place to most quickly and easily get the information they need. If Google (or any search engine) can lure double the number of visitors, the advertisers’ 5-15% will also double. Happy searchers + happy advertisers = happy search engine! 

And the most important winners are….(drum roll) my clients and all the other businesses that provide up-to-date, easy-to-understand, and relevant content by regularly posting blogs.

A few facts of blogosphere life will lend some insight into the enormously effective symbiosis I’ve just described.  First of all, as David Verklin and Bernice Kanner stress in their book Watch This. Listen Up. Click Here, “Google is the undisputed leader in search….and search is the most lucrative activity on the Net..”
 
The authors go on to explain a second fact: “The true drivers of its (Google’s) ad bounty are AdWords and AdSense.”  Advertisers choose and bid for keyword terms that bring up their ads next to search results, paying Google only when a web surfer clicks on their ad.  Since both the advertisers and Google are making money, the system continues.  Meanwhile, we business bloggers provide the smorgasbord of content that keeps those visitors coming, all the while driving traffic to our respective business web sites.

Indianapolis small business marketing maven Lorraine Ball says blogging is no longer optional for entrepreneurs.  “Even traditional business-to-consumer, nontechnical businesses are going online and adding blogs to their marketing mix.” Ball cites some of the unique benefits of blogs: they’re simple, less invasive than email or snail mail, they’re interactive, and they provide a way “to share the latest news about the company, new products, industry trends, and the occasional comment from a customer.”

So who foots the bill for blogs?  I like to think of it this way: The advertisers foot the bill, while we business bloggers fit the bill by providing exactly the kind of knowhow, information, products, and services visitors came to find!