Is Blogging The New Volunteer Work?

 

 

Is it? Let’s think about it. If you are blogging to bring in business and not one client can be traced back to the blog, then, you are in essence volunteering to throw out your expertise for people to read and implement and never ever give you a dime. Heck most will not even give you a hat tip of a share. This is similar to what Carol Roth talks about this in her book The Entrepreneur Equation (which is fabulous) where she calls a business that is not making any money a jobby (job hobby). Let’s look at this from just blogging as you can have a business and not have a blog so you are not giving away free information as you do in blogging (unless of course you are not making any money there either). You can also have a blog without a business which is the question here … is blogging the new volunteer work?

Blogging as Volunteer Work

We like to help people, of course we do. It helps to build trust in our knowledge and who we are as people. A freebie here for something simple is spreading the goodwill of humanity. But are we taking it too far in blogging? Is post after post that is helping readers really just volunteering your time and you throwing money out the window? Is it always throwing money out the window? No, as in time clients may to come to you from consistently reading the blog and when the time arises for them to need your services, they look no further. Ok, great argument and an even better one is that in blogging you are building trust, authority, and a community that can become clients and/or referral agents. But this takes time so in the meantime, aren’t you really just volunteering? Yes, your writing skills will improve no doubt as the more you practice something the better you get at it (and take a peek at the free writing tips that other volunteers are dishing out) but there has to come a time when you have to look at the time and effort vs the conversion rate. Is there a time limit? Should there be? I do not know. I guess when your revenue stream runs dry or when you take some real action and make some really big but yet simple changes.

Taking Real Action

Taking real action sounds like a power talk where you hear something get so pumped up and cannot wait to implement and make the changes. Sound familiar? We have all done it and feel so empowered until we are back into our own world and sit there and try to make the changes to stop being the volunteer in the world of blogging and becoming the business person. It is a part of being honest with yourself and really look at your blog, website, tweets, connections and tap into where changes can be made so that leads can become conversions. Sometimes it is as simple as asking for it. As many here are readers of Chris Brogan’s blog, you probably were just as shocked as I was over Derek Halpern’s evaluation of the Kitchen Table Companies website: ” … but I don’t see the words small business anywhere on this website.” I think that the look on Chris’ face emulated all of ours – are you effing kidding me? Huh? If that was not an eye opener for many I do not know what is.

Do People Know What You Are All About?

Ask yourself. No wait, throw it out there on Twitter or Facebook and just simply ask, do you know what I do? I actually saw this question posed on Twitter:

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