Entrepreneurial Marketing and Blogging Angst (A Response)

When Cristi Jakubik writes something, everyone around the Ranch pays attention. This goes double for me. Few others have the experience she does in the trenches of marketing. Cristi speaks from this experience, having earned her stripes on the Silicon Valley Battlefields.

She is one of the people that I try to get as much free advice from as possible when she has a moment between consulting entrepreneurs. That’s why I was blown away that she wrote a blog about reasons not to blog (please suspend your sense of irony for the moment). I was surprised because I had never questioned blogging as integral to a good marketing campaign in the 21st century. But since Cristi raised the question, you all should take note.

I’m going to attempt to address Cristi’s argument, and offer my own flipside to many of her arguments. I’m doing this because (spoiler alert) I think blogging is hugely important in the long term for each of your start-ups.

To Cristi’s first point, “Blogging may not be my calling.”

Yes. I agree. I have no doubt that most people aren’t called to blog in the same way that Che was called to run around in the jungles of Cuba, or the way that Henry Ford was called to revolutionize the world’s understanding of manufacturing. Some people are called to share ideas, and blogging is a great tool to facilitate that. And I also think that blogging is mostly a great tool to create a relationship with your customer. It’s a means to your ends of successful entrepreneurship (your calling). If you write engaging content that people come back to regularly, they will ultimately feel like they know you. Just like a celebrity, as a blogger, you earn fans who read your blog and “know” you well enough to trust you at your word, whether they’ve ever met you or not. This trust means sales for your company.

To her second point, “I like to create value for my customers and let them speak to my record.”

Nobody can argue with the person who lets their results speak for themselves. And this makes blogging less attractive because it’s such a long-term investment and the value it creates is very hard to quantify. I’m pretty sure even The Google hasn’t come up with analytics for blog posts => sales closed. I still believe that effective blogging drives traffic to your site, and makes you more credible. A good blog actually gives your customers one more way to tell other people about you. I love sending the tweet that says, “Hey, check out this awesome blog I found!”

To Cristi’s final point, “Although I have passion and energy about launching my venture, blogging seems like bragging.”

I think Cristi makes another good point here that blogging isn’t about bragging. Blogging is about providing value for free to your customers. Blogs that brag are blogs that aren’t read. Blogs that give it away for free get people coming back over and over, developing that long-term relationship and trust that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I was doing a bit of social media work with a local start-up in the wireless industry, Movero, and I remember telling them that their blog needs to provide lots of free content for their readers about wireless devices. Apple releases a new iPhone, Android stops sucking, anything in that area, they need to talk about it. People love coming to one place for the latest info, and that’s not bragging, that's sharing.

That said, let me share with you that Tech Ranch RULES. You should come start your venture with us. Cristi will make your marketing sing.

Ok, that’s out of my system.

---Bottom Line---

Blogging is writing. Writing is painful. Hemingway once said, “Writing is easy…You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.” Cristi is right again. If you find blogging painful, you’re just like the rest of us. And I take that one step further and say that if something is painful, and you find yourself resisting on Facebook, or Twitter, or TechRanchAustin.com, you’re not alone, and consider how the more painful something is the more necessary it is to pursuing your calling. I think writing is absolutely necessary, and I would encourage you to deny the pain any power, and simply do it in spite of the pain. We are entrepreneurs, after all.

In conclusion, I’m challenging Cristi to come up with a blog explaining 3 ways that blogging is absolutely crucial to the marketing of a start-up by next week. If she write this, I’ll write a blog post of her choosing.

I hope this helps.

Austin Gunter @austingunter