When I originally sat down to write this post, it was all about the idea of “Don’t Blog Angry”. I quickly realized that Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media had already written a great article on the “7 Blog Posts You Write, But Shouldn’t Publish“.
After some deep meditation, I remembered a recent conversation with Jon Parrella, President of CT-based energy supplier Discount Power. As I was discussing the advantages of business blogging to him, he had a fairly standard objection: “What could we write about?”
There are a number of brainstorming questions I use in situations like this, and the first one I posed was “What is something that your customers should know about your industry?” Jon immediately went on a rant about how electricity customers (i.e. everyone) ear charged based on load curves that were developed in the 1970′s. Because of this archaic math, it means that you & I are paying for power usage during peak hours, even if there isn’t anything using electricity in the house.
Based on Jon’s reaction, I’ve now tweaked my brainstorming question to be “What is something your customers should be angry about?”. Every industry has a tax, law, or practice that is out-of-date, drives-up cost, or makes life difficult for everyone involved. As a business owner & marketer, a blog gives you the ability to educate your customers and give them more information about your industry. I’ve always said that small business owners are blessed (some say cursed) with knowledge. Share some of this knowledge with your readers and you will be rewarded with their trust, because trust turns into customers.
For me, one of the things that makes me angry about the SEO/Inbound Marketing industry is the fly-by-night scam artists that never explain the total cost of SEO. Search optimization is not a one-time thing, like developing a new logo. Many SEO firms will tell you that they will have you “ranking #1 on Google” in a month, but what happens after that month is over? Many SEO’s won’t explain the on-going process of content creation & link building. Just because they get you to the top of the mountain doesn’t mean that you’ll stay there.
So, what should your customers be angry about?
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