Why Your Small Business Must Start a Blog
For those of you who have never visited a farm before, many of them have a large brick of salt for their animals, called a “salt lick.”
A salt lick is exactly what the name implies. It’s a salt deposit that animals keep coming back to—and licking -- in order to ingest nutrients they need. Now, whether or not you want your readers to lick their computer screens is up to you, but you definitely want them to look at your blog as a source of “nutrients” they need to return to and consume.
A small business blog is a marketing tool, but marketing is a nebulous term, especially if you’re an entrepreneur just starting out. You probably think of marketing and sales as synonyms, interchangeable in definition and in purpose. They’re not. Sales is the process of getting a customer to buy; marketing is how you position your product, find your customers, and decide how you’re going to reach them.
Therefore, you shouldn’t start a blog simply to try to generate sales. It’s a place where you find your customers, feed them information, and position your value -- the equivalent of a digital salt lick.