The “it” I’m referring to here is blogging. Yes, old school, good old-fashioned business blogging.

I decided to write about this after listening to this week’s edition of InsidePR where the gang were lamenting the decline of blogging amongst the C-suite.

I don’t think it’s just the C-suite or business managers that aren’t blogging as much as, say, they were three years ago; the number of consultants I’ve worked with in the last few months that aren’t blogging genuinely concerns me.

I don’t use the word concern lightly here because obviously I want my customers to succeed. However, of the last three consultants I’ve worked with only one had a blog, which he didn’t update more than once a week.

The other two consultants relied on pay-per click adverts driving traffic to their website.

Surprisingly all three consultants were active on Twitter, whilst only one had a Facebook Page.

Auditing Online Marketing

I looked at the Google Analytics of two of the customers – the third had no analytics set-up – and could see fairly quickly that the consultant who was blogging was getting much more organic traffic.

“The consultant who was blogging was getting much more organic traffic”

Blogging isn’t just about getting traffic; it’s a perfect communications channel for showing a more rounded, nuanced side of who you are and what your company is doing. In many ways a blog is the textual personification of a consultant’s know-how and special skills.

Social media channels like Twitter are great for networking, connecting and crisis management in the B2B sector, but they don’t really do enough to demonstrate a consultant’s skills. [Read more...]