This month marks three years since I started blogging on Tradesmeninsights.com. With over 500 posts in the system and over 500 followers who are signed up for my monthly newsletter, I thought I’d reflect a bit on what’s come out of all my efforts over the past three years.
If you’re doing a blog or thinking about starting one, make sure you identify the objectives and expectations at the onset.
Our objective when starting the blog was to talk to those interested in reaching the professional tradesmen and ways you could do that. We also wanted to help educate our target audience (manufacturers) on ways they could integrate social media tools into their marketing mix since most of them were very traditional on how they approach things and didn’t like change.
I can remember back in the mid 90s when websites were the big thing and how even back then manufacturers were the last group to come to the party. For those of you who have been around long enough, you will remember those days. Can you image a business today without a website?
To become a thought leader in marketing to the professional tradesmen was our primary goal. We knew that if folks like you (by the way, if you’re a regular, thanks for sticking around) got benefit out of my babblings, we would eventually connect and might even do some business.
We have established dialogs with several folks and have been fortunate to start doing business with several of them. It’s gratifying to be at a trade association meeting or shows and be introduced to people who know who we are because of the blog. And oh, by the way, we are getting business from our blog which was one of our other objectives.
If you do a blog, make sure you have clear objectives and an audience that wants to learn more.