Tris Hussey over at One By One Media points out today that one of their Bloggers For Hire business clients was mentioned in an interview with a couple prominent bloggers. Here’s the post, Freight and Shipping mentioned on Net Concepts.
Congratulations guys!
But the nod of some free recognition is not what jumped out at me in this post. Tris goes on to say something in, what for me, is an attention grabbing paragraph. When talking about their client, Tris says,
Has made huge gains on Google. He’s #1 on many of the terms he wanted. His Adwords budget could be cut by thousands of dollars a month and…he increased his revenue so much that he expanded to have two new offices. Two! Not, oh yeah a couple extra people. Two whole freakin’ offices! That’s jobs for people in Tennessee and Florida. That’s supplies (computers, desks, etc) that are purchased. That’s all those things. Oh, and he’s still busy. Really busy. He told me this week he’s been so busy that he’s slept in the office a few times. Eric attributes a lot of this success to his blog and Jane, our Masters degree holding, English professor pro-blogger.
Did you catch all that? If not read that paragraph again. Seriously. Read it.
What They’ve Got
Take a look over there and you will see some things they don’t have:
- A flashy animated web site – Their site has about a dozen basic pages with simple button navigation, mostly filled with text and a little bit of graphics for curb appeal.
- A blog template that blends with their web site – Their blog design is a plain vanilla two column set up without much of anything in the way of bells and whistles. And the it looks nothing like their base web site.
- Gobs of ads and buttons pushing folks back to the main site – All they’ve got is a simple “Request a Free Quote” button at the top of the side bar. None of the posts have ads. Sure the writer tells how great their service offerings are. But it is far from overbearing.
- Heavy action in the comments – A quick scan through the posts on their blog and you will see that people are really not commenting there. They have comments open, but there isn’t even any dialog happening.
- A blogger who is an expert in their field – The outsourced hired blogger writing their blog is Jane Goodwin. She’s not an expert in the type of service the company offers. She’s simply an excellent writer.
- A blogger blogger who knows the inner workings of the company – The original article held up this blog because it
is an example of a blog that focuses on providing content about shipping but doesn’t offer insights into the organization.
And that’s mostly because their writer is not even directly a part of their company.
The Results of Blogging
Yet according to Tris, none of that stuff they don’t have matters.
Because in spite of all that stuff they don’t have, they’re saying that since they’ve started blogging at Freight & Shipping the company has experienced so much growth that they are opening two new offices in two new states.
The business owner attributes much of that recent growth to their blog.
And their amazing results haven’t taken them forever either. I poked around the archives over there and here are couple things I discovered.
The first post on their blog is dated 1 September 2006, so they are just at the 6 month mark now.
In that time the blog has just over 100 posts. (November was a little light for some reason.)
Business Blogging Works
Does business blogging work? Um.. Yeah!
In the case of Freight & Shipping it has proven itself to work tremendously well.
Thanks Chris for building on this. I like how you pointed out the things they don’t have, and how it hasn’t mattered.
And the content, the great content, that Jane writes proves again that it isn’t flash, it isn’t being an a-lister, it’s good writing that makes a blog.
And welcome to the OBO/B4H team!
Yeah, Tris. It’s easy for folks to get distracted by the flash and forget that it is quality content that makes the blog.
Chris,
Great post, and good comments by Tris and by you.
I am a new blogger, and I want to provide my readers with the best content that I can write. Though my blog occupies a niche, I still want to fill it well. With all that is written about flash, I was beginning to wonder about the thing that I had hoped was most important — good content. Thanks for affirming that content matters.
Tariq, Personally I’m of the opinion that content is King. The experience of Freight & Shipping further reinforces it for me.
Took a quick walk around your place and you are off to an excellent start. My advice is keep writing, find other blogs in your niche and subscribe to their feeds, keep adding value to other blogs with your quality comments. Your blog will grow over time.
When I started my personal blog it took months before any dialog started in the comments. I didn’t understand how to participate in the blogosphere then. I’d learned enough by the time I started this blog that it got up to speed much more quickly.
I’m curious. Why did you chose SquareSpace over some of the others out there such as TypePad, WordPress, or Blogger?
How you are making us learn. Thanks.
Chris, thank you very much. I am honored and humbled.
Chris,
Thank you very much for the kind words and especially for taking the time to come over to The Kitchen Table. I will keep looking around the blogosphere to learn and to contribute where I might add to the discussion.
The Freight & Shipping story will be useful to me in the future because I advise some of my entrepreneur clients about growing their businesses. Many are hesitant about blogging because they are concerned that they may not get the look quite right. This story will help them know that they can grow through blogging if they focus on good content.
Regarding using Squarespace, my blog was given to me as a gift by a very good friend — my children call him uncle though he’s not a blood relative. Though I did not pick the software, it is easy for a newbie like me to use.
Your blog is full of useful, well presented information. I plan to keep reading it.
Mamacita, my hat’s off to a Master Wordsmith.
Tariq, You’ve got good stuff on your table. Why wouldn’t I want to check it out?
I’ll be curious how you like SquareSpace over time. It is nowhere near as popular as the other three I mentioned right now. But that doesn’t mean it might not be better!
Oh, and if any of your clients ever want to talk blogging to help them get their minds around what it can and can not do, give me a shout. [Shameless Plug]
Chris,
Thanks for the kind words.
I had planned on telling them about you if they needed blogging help. I like to share useful information, and your posts certainly qualify.
My first response: Whoa.
My second response: Blogging is just like real estate. Quality content. Quality content. Quality content.
And one thing Freight and Shipping does is maintain a laser focus on the topic of the content.
It’s really just a blog about freight and shipping.
I think you’re right on both accounts, Mark. A regular flow of high quality content is like steadily moving your house to a more desirable location, and increases the value of your web real estate.
It’s the long tail in action. Stay in your niche.