Reading from the blog stream today I came this: Does this blog make me look fat? By Ed Cone. The article talks about how some people envisioned blogs playing out and comparing it to what actually happened. Having read and skimmed it I got me thinking about my blog and what I’m doing with it.
Perhaps you are like me, an occasionally bright and talented technical superstar out to build your own free lance consulting practice. Because you have the technical side of things down you begin focusing on the other stuff. Things like marketing and sales. It doesn’t matter that you can build ESBs and SharePoint portals while trying to shave another second off you lap time at ECR if you don’t have a customer to pay your for that ESB or portal. Worse, without that customer there aren’t any track days to be had either.
So you develop some strategies for getting those customers. One of those strategies is to blog. How is it really working out for you? Do customers actually hire consultants because of their nifty blog? Does getting 1000 hits a day bring in customers to a consultants blog? I suspect not. Being a hip on the edge technical geek I’ve had a blog sense the very beginning. Not a high traffic blog, not even an active blog a lot of the time. But it has always been here.
But the questions I have are:
- Is having a blog worth the effort to a freelance technical professional?
- How should a blog fit in to a freelance technical professional’s marketing strategy?
- Are there KPIs we can use to determine our effectiveness?
- How long will it take for a blogging strategy to begin showing results?
- Most important of all: How many customers will close the deal as a result of the blog and how will I know it was the blog and not some other (possibly better) channel?
There is also a flip side to this: I don’t filter too much of what I put here. I post about my hobbies and personal life right along with professional stuff. Is that really a great idea? Does that scare away customers? Would I be better off separating the two? Would I be more attractive to clients if I posted my political opinions here too? If I’m not going to filter out my personal stuff, why not go all in?
I think I have some answers to this stuff. But I need to organize my thoughts around it. I also would like to develop some proof about my thoughts. By proof I mean actual traffic, customers, posts, and other data to actually support or disprove my hypothesis.