Narcissus
In Greek mythology Narcissus was a young hero renowned for his beauty. But he was very cruel and he rejected the advances of everyone who loved him. As punishment he fell in love with his own reflection in a pool, not realizing it was himself he was looking at.
So what does this have to do with blogging? Many small business blogs fall in love with their own reflections. By this I mean they only write about themselves and promote their own products.
Blogging is Not an Advertising Medium
Narcissistic blog owners mistakenly believe that a blog is just another advertising medium. But in today’s world, with the possible exception of the Superbowl broadcast, no one wants to look at ads. Your blog should not exist for the direct promotion of your company and your products. You may as well save your time and money and direct your resources into actual advertising.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you can never promote yourself on your blog. What I mean is that this should not be the primary focus of your blog. It is fine to promote a special sale you are having or a new product launch but you should intersperse these posts with plenty of interesting and relevant content that has nothing directly to do with your business.
The Purpose of a Small Business Blog
I always maintain there are two purposes for a small business blog. First, a blog can help build your reputation with your customer base and within your industry. You can establish yourself and your business as an industry leader, someone who knows just about everything about their industry and is regularly creating fresh ideas. Second, your blog should help generate traffic to your web site. As I have said before Google loves content and if you update your blog regularly then you will be adding lots of content that will all be indexed by Google. If you have done a good job with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) then people will find your blog content when searching on your subject area.
While a narcissistic blog may succeed in creating some traffic, it will fail miserably at establishing the blogger and the business as an industry leader. A blog is a tool. Like any tool, you can use it in a halfhearted way, or you embrace all that it can do and ensure you get maximum benefit. Creating a narcissistic blog is like buying a $500 tool kit and only ever using one screwdriver. There is so much more your blog can do for you.
Today, a blog reader has plenty of choices. There is so much competition for attention that one small misstep and you can lose many readers. Or worse still, if you just focus on promoting your company you will have created a narcissistic blog that will likely never have many readers. But establish yourself as a useful resource then your readers won’t mind the occasional self-promotion.
Kudos to one of my favorite bloggers, Chris Brogan, for planting the idea for this post.
