Are You Wasting Agency Resources (or, Why Do You Blog?)

I would be interested to hear the answer to the above, as we’ve been asking this question lately. May seem silly to ask or at the very least counterintuitive, but take a look, randomly, at any agency’s blog. After seeing a few you may ask yourself the following questions:

-Who exactly is their audience, who are they writing for?

-These posts are good on varying levels (sometimes) but they’re basically about what’s going on generally in the advertising world, what does this agency do?

-They post almost once a week, which is impressive, but I don’t know that I’d come back, there wasn’t much to take away to help me in my business.

If these questions could be asked about your blog, you need to re-think the effort you or your team are putting into your blog.

Quite frankly, if you’re not blogging for new business, then you’d better be flush with cash and free time, because otherwise, why are you doing it?

You may enjoy writing (I do) but is that why you’re spending precious time that you could otherwise spend on other business or your personal life writing the agency blog? Let’s cut to the chase with a cliché: if you’re going to blog, make it count.

I’m not saying your blog has to be a stale, shilling machine for your agency, far from it. Incorporate your personality but do so as a thought leader. Give your prospects reasons to come back and use your Twitter feed, Facebook page and newsletter (sparingly) to drive prospects back to your blog.

I saw this personified in a post on the Future Buzz blog this week called What You Can’t Fake. The post isn’t directly about agency new business, but the takeaway is. From the post:

One of the things that stands out to me the most during a pivotal second round interview I had at Union Square Ventures. I sat down with one of the partners Brad Burnham, and presented my resume. He told me to hang on to it and he just wanted to chat.

When I pressed him as to why, he responded with something I will never forget which went something like this; “You can work really hard on crafting a well written, organized, resume with bullet points of accomplishments – but you can’t fake 500 blog posts.”

And further, per Brad Singer, author of Future Buzz:

This is a story you should pay attention to because it’s not just true for individuals, it’s equally true for your business. Eric has obvious passion and dedication for what he does and proves it through his actions. Due to this, his resume wasn’t really necessary.

It’s not such a different story when someone is ready to buy one of your products. Just like Brad had already done his homework on Eric, your customers are doing their homework on you.

A well written blog is, or can be, part of your agency’s “resume.” I’m not saying you’re going to automatically get the business through your blog alone, but prospects should be and will be reading it to help make a decision about working with your agency if you write for them and promote it persistently but appropriately.

Make it count indeed.

10 responses to "Are You Wasting Agency Resources (or, Why Do You Blog?)"

Anonymous 05/11/2010 13:15 pm Reply

Good blog content, like good creative, can be time consuming to create but it's really worth the investment. It allows potential clients to know you before you ever even know they're interested in you. Your blog, like your website, is one area you can completely showcase your capabilities – without the client making changes.

One other point I would add is that if you're not using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media forums to post links to your blog posts, you really should be. It will boost your SEO and you never know who can find you on Twitter. I've had people I don't know comment on my personal blog because they found me on Twitter.
Deb Budd 05/11/2010 14:15 pm Reply

We're investigating a blog resource through a company named Compendium. Their product will allow us to post AND distribute through our social media channels as well as optimize for search engines. We are about to discuss blog strategy. A blog without a strategy is just a vanity piece for ad agencies. Looks pretty, but only impresses if the content offers value to readers.
Lee McKnight Jr. 15/11/2010 15:34 pm Reply

Appreciate both comments, thank you. Thanks also Deb for the info on Compendium, not familiar with them, but will check them out.
Bill Field 20/05/2011 09:13 am Reply

Good points on many levels – especially about faking it. Content is king with a perspective. Blogging is equal parts informative and entertaining. Not to mention that blogging makes you a far better writer. Lots of reasons to blog that far outweigh not doing it. You have to have a continual conversation that is relevant.
- Lee McKnight Jr 20/05/2011 09:32 am Reply
  
  Appreciate the comment Bill, especially from an Agency principal that keeps up his own blog rather well. Continual conversation with relevance is spot on.
  
  Thanks
John Dye 20/05/2011 11:10 am Reply

I agree with Bill; content is king! We get lots of traffic on posts I thought would not drive more than 10 people to our site. Interesting to watch how it performs. On our site, content matter varies, and each person submitting has their own voice and style. I like that. It shows a “face” to our clients and prospective clients. We do have to refine it to bring in more new business however. Good points in this post–thanks!

JOHN DYE
President

FLUID STUDIO
http://www.fluid-studio.net
- Lee McKnight Jr 20/05/2011 11:20 am Reply
  
  Thanks John, comments are adding a lot to this post today. I’m always impressed with a consistent agency blog, and especially with those agency blogs that are able to present more than one voice. It can indeed show a “face” to your clients, but I don’t have to tell you, it’s not easy to do consistently. I hope your efforts are paying off!
Eric Hyman 20/05/2011 11:11 am Reply

This is a great topic. As the driver of our agency blog, I often ask this myself. We get very few comments on our blog, so I have seriously wondered in the past if it is worth the effort. So this week I took a look at our analytics and I was shocked to see over the past six months we have an average of 3,500 views per month and 2,500 uniques, with time spent on page between 1:30 and 2 mins. Suddenly I think it has been worth the time. I can’t say it has won us any specific business, but I am 100% confident it has helped make both new business and employment prospects more comfortable in knowing a bit more about us and our thinking. Which I’d bet did play a role in helping them make decisions that have worked to our financial benefit. I think anyone who doesn’t recognize this doesn’t really have as good a grasp of what is going on in our world than they might think.
Eric Hyman
Sr. Partner, Director of Marketing & Communications
JWT, Atlanta / Dallas / Houston
@ericadman
- Lee McKnight Jr 20/05/2011 11:27 am Reply
  
  Thanks Eric, and especially for sharing those stats. You bring up a valid point-I think those agencies that blog consistently but maybe aren’t seeing a lot of comments would do well to revisit their analytics. They might see a similar scenario. If you’re consistently blogging with content your prospects find valuable, they will ultimately pay attention, in whatever form that takes. To your point, they may not repay you with a lot of comments, and yes, it can be hard to quantify all the effort you put into it, but it can absolutely play a role in influencing their decision to work with you.
Ben Randolph 24/08/2011 23:20 pm Reply

I’d like to build on Eric’s comments. We have five different people blogging each week regarding their specialties, and where we may lack in comments we certainly pick up in overall organic search traffic. For example, one of our staff recently wrote a blog post about retail center marketing, and two days later it’s in the second position on Google for the search term “retail center marketing.” So I’d recommend not only weaving in content that relates to your business but also content that focuses on your vertical specialties. Because if your prospective client is researching marketing tactics/ideas/agencies per their vertical, you may not show up unless you’ve discussed that vertical in your blogging. Hope that helps.

Ben Randolph
Principal, Account Director
Agency Entourage
@agencyentourage