I want to agree with A8ch and Adrian. You can't split the two. They have different functions. The presence of a blog can be very effective if you use it as a means to connect and communicate with your audience. Try approaching your view on a blog from another angle. It is not suppose to be "work". Find something to write that you love and then be honest at where you are. Many Marketers today pretend to be something they are not in order to drive traffic. In the end, this will never work. If you are however truthful about where you are and what your issues are, you will find other Internet Marketers will come to your aid, start discussing your issues and giving you answers. This is when your blog becomes a powerful tool in driving traffic. When this happens, you can use the Social networks and other venues to drive traffic, so that more people will connect.
I have found this to be true. People don't buy from you for what you are promoting but from who you are as a person. Think about it!
Blogs yes, and specifically blog commenting, and Guest Blogging bring very relevant traffic to your niche. Blog commenting is probably the quickest and easiest to do but recently it has caught on widespread that blogs were getting flooded with comments and irrelevant comments just to get the backlinks to the commenters site that blog owners started putting more restrictions on commenting to cut down on non-contributing comments. If you're willing to jump through some hoops and are sincere this practice still produces relevant backlinks to your site. Guest Blogging is a little more complicated and takes longer to do but has longer lasting results. Good luck
You can use Onlywire to automatically post your blog pages onto all your social media accounts. Works like a charm.
Depending on the topic of your blog, it doesn't have to be a major time expense. Just don't create a blog that requires constant daily updates in order to compete with others in your blogging field or you'll end up as a full-time blogger! Once you decide on a topic and domain name, you can have your blog up and running in one night (no experience necessary) for $60. That includes a year of hosting, SEO, email accounts, setup from start to finish - everything. It used to be much more difficult, but now there are so many themes/plugins available, that anyone can set up their own. Blogs are also an EXCELLENT source of income! I blogged part time for almost four years, and while it took some time to build a readership, I made between $2k and $3k every month for the last couple of years. That's not enough to support a family, but it's a great supplement. I HIGHLY recommend blogging, but don't blog just to advertise your business...you can capitalize on all of that page space by opening up other income streams (affiliate programs, referral programs, Google ads, etc...all of which cost you nothing). By the way, what is your business? Maybe we can all brainstorm some blog ideas with you...
Blogs are a strong business asset - they should be used to post industry news, link bait etc. You should use news stories as landing pages from social media postings, and also use in context linking from your blog to your actual website to tie them together and get a bit of a boost in the search engines.
Think of a blog as the central hub of your online promotion. You can use social media and other websites to promote and build your blog to the point where it has a strong following of it's own, and the readers are doing half the promotional work for you because the content is so good and they want to share it with anyone. Not an easy place to get to, but worth it in the end.
I've just started to blog again after not doing so for a few years. Blogging has changed quite a bit over the years. It's been fun getting back into it.
Blog is one of the fundamental tools of all Internet marketing. It isn't a trendy tool that only a few tech-savvy users will pick up. Whatever you do, the goal of the blog should always be to facilitate conversation. If you'd rather create a for sale product or would rather have an authority site without any chance for feedback, you would be better suited with a plain HTML format that can be easily accessed from any PC.
Blogs are great if you have something niche and interesting to write, otherwise it can be tough work getting the traffic. You really need to Blog everyday for the first few months to attract traffic.
Blogs are very very important! A place to send people from social networking sites to find out more about you and your opportunity. You are also easier discovered and can write up trainings so instead of repeating yourself all the time to new team-mates you can send them to a post in which explains how to do something.
Blogs are hugely relevant! People are searching the internet to find solutions to their problems. If you can provide that solution with your blog, then that's a HUGE win for you.
Those are tow different things, but blogs, If run properly can be a big contribution to your business, If not major.
