I recently received a comment on my post “Should Social Media Replace Cold Calling” from a reader clarifying that blogs are a bit different on the social media landscape. The reader was pointing out that the day may come when every salesperson is blogging. Thank you, Todd, for the comment!
It is a good clarification, because I agree that blogging is different than other social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter.
The essence of my point remains, though, in that I still believe salespeople need to be very conscientious of how they are spending their time. Social media, including blogging, can quickly gobble up precious time that should be spent on interacting individually with customers and prospects in person and on the phone.
I do think there is value to blogging (obviously I think this because I blog) and I do think there are places to read compilations of blogs (like this one from Top Sales Experts).
If you are going to blog, I would just offer this one suggestion: Spend time off hours writing several postings at once that then are “ready to go” when you want to publish one at a time. You will get in a rhythm with writing and can usually crank out more than you would if you tried to just start fresh each time you wanted to publish. Same goes for reading blogs… set aside a block of time to read several of your favorites (possibly that you subscribe to via RSS), instead of trying to read them throughout your day or week.
So, is there value to blogging? Only you know what is the best use of your time on any given day. If you ever are blogging when you know you should be interacting one-on-one with your customers, then it’s probably wise to listen to your gut and do what is ultimately going to garner more results.
What are your thoughts? Feel free to comment so we can keep the dialogue going!
2 Responses
Good question Mark. I think it’s a question a lot of sales people struggle with. Blogging can be a great tool to communicate with your current clients and attract new clients. If you have a lot of clients your blog can be another personal contact point that they have with you. Something to always keep in mind is whenever you publish anything on the internet, whether it’s a blog post or a twitter post, it reflects on you as a person and your company. Besides not being a rude and obnoxious, this means that if you are going to blog you need to post regularly and try to provide your readers with good content that is interesting to them. Regularly can mean once a day, once a week, once a month, or once a quarter, but I would recommend posting once a week and at the very least posting once a month. Blogging is one of those things that if you don’t have the time to put into it and at least attempt to do it well you probably shouldn’t do at all. “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.” — Will Rogers