CT Biz Blogs

Dan C. Hamilton, of Columbus, Ohio, is a realtor who just started blogging. He’s hoping that blogging will make a difference when you choose a realtor in his area.

[B]logs are going to be a critical asset to successful Realtors of the future. A blog allows readers like you to get inside my head. It is also a forum for me to provide you with tips or notices that may be important to selling or buying your home. If you’re researching which Realtor you would like to sell your house or find you the house of your dreams, you want someone you can trust and someone you think you’ll get along with. Blogging, while it doesn’t tell you exactly who I am, gives you a little more insight the type of person I am. It shows of my personality a little. You see how my mind works and you see my sense of humor. It builds a small trust between us.

Is he right? Only time will tell — it’s early days yet for Dan.

But out of curiosity, I did a little research, trying to find some numbers, just to see if blogging does actually help build business. Most of the information is anecdotal and informal. J.D. Iles, of Lincoln Signs, says that blogging has brought him business. I do know that this year he posted a picture of a “holiday gift sign” folks could order, and just a few days ago, he mentioned that he was finishing up 30 of the house signs.

In a post from October on blogging for business, I wrote about Green Cine Daily, a blog for an online DVD and video rental store. According to an article about blogs in the San Francisco Chronicle, the owner, Dennis Woo, credits the blog with helping to double his business.

I also found some numbers in Kevin O’Keefe’s LexBlog blog, saying that a divorce lawyer in Kansas, Grant Griffiths, has gotten 10 new clients in 6 weeks as a direct result of his blog. He quotes Grant:

Blogging enables marketing efforts that one can do individually or in a group. For example, individuals or firms in the same practice area, can blog in their respective states and link to and off one another. This in and of itself increases “market share” for those blogging firms and solos. Blogs are becoming a huge source of information that is not static and expands every second of every day.

Now, I’m talking about business blogs here, not blogs that are the business, meaning that the blogger makes his or her income from the blog. There’s plenty of information about that at Darren Rowse’s Problogger, among other places. It’s possible (but not easy) to make an honest living by blogging, as Darren does. But that’s not the focus of CT Biz Blogs (although I will have a post about that, one of these days).

Blogging a buisness is still a young idea, so actual numbers are going to be sparse yet. And I must admit that it’s not always going to be clear if a blog helped or not. You can assume that ranking #1 for a search result is a good thing, and will certainly help people find your blog. But there are other ways to get your blog noticed, and there are other factors on a blog that will help people decide that your business is one with which they would like to do business. I’ll be writing about some of those ideas in the coming year, for sure.

If you’re a small business blogger, do you have any numbers or stories about how blogging has helped you, that you’re willing to share? We’d love to hear them!