Great, thanks. I’ve seen the Knowing-Doing Gap and it looks like an interesting read.

There’s another book I just finished reading, but haven’t found time to write a book-review on yet: The Knowing-Doing Gap.
Not exactly about using social media for growth, but more to be used – practised more likely! – for implementing everything you read into your business

Great suggestion. I ordered The Citizen Marketers a couple of days ago from Amazon. Not here yet. But your timing is incredible.

Anything other books you might recommend about using social media for marketing/business growth? I’ve read most of the blogging books – they seem to just say mostly the same thing. My current focus is trying to get a real solid grasp around how blogs can market a small business and help convert potential clients.

Dawud, you and Dave Starr are both ‘talking’ about The Long Tail principle: there are a lot of (profitable) niche markets out there (out here?). Dave’s example of how to use your specific ‘readers’ looking for that niche can help your product grow (by blogging – interacting – community – ‘talking-about-it in other comunities).
Another good book on this matter is The Citizen Marketers – explaining why bloggers / communities are so important for all markets, can even make or break any market.

Yeah, baby…like the new signature.

Yes. Exactly. The way I think about it, a ‘traditional, brochure-style’ website is two dimensional (hopefully), with the two dimensions being your write & they read. No interaction otherwise.

Blogs are three dimensional in that you write, they read and then they have the chance to comment. Now the site is highly interactive – giving readers from your target market, as you said, “a big honking gulp” of who you are. You could even say that blogs are 4-D because your write, they read, they comment and you can engage them in conversation.

There are trillions of websites out there, and the companies they’re representing are run by actual people… but sometimes that’s really hard to tell based on the copy.

And when readers (that’s us) are skimming around looking for information and a place to get help for their (our) problems, it makes it a whole lot easier if we can connect with an actual personality. A living, breathing human being.

Like us.

Blogs, more so I believe than any other medium, give readers a chance to feel that human connection, which breeds trust, community, yadda yadda yadda… and all that yadda yadda translates into successful customers, and successful businesses.

Great points, Dave. I don’t know exactly what Chris meant with his comments, but I’m guessing he’s speaking to how much easier it was for bloggers three-four years ago to create large communities simply because there wasn’t that many bloggers. Now it’s different. There are so many bloggers, that the ‘competition’ for readers is much greater than just a few years ago. I, personally, don’t think that’s a bad thing. However I do think it now takes more effort to become successful.

And I’m right with you with Google. Absolutely. I get over a third of my traffic from Google’s organic search alone. That’s amazing, considering that when my site was static, I’d see a much smaller percentage of Google referrers than I do now. And keep in mind, I’m still in the beginning phase of my blog…

I would counter, though that someone not “enjoying” the benefits of being on the leading edge (bleeding edge) can benefit even more from blogging. Suppose you have an idea for say, a video sharing site. Yeah, I know, you mean go up against YouTube and the other “big guys” … but your idea is unique enough to merit giving it a try. Putting up the site by itself is unlikely to get you enough traffic to even write the specifications and copy, let alone recover the time and other resources. But if you blog about it, and already have a relationship with some other movers and shakers you can artfully explain why you are better to them and at least have a chance of getting the little burst of traffic you need to give your “better way” a chance … and unlike trying to buy huge media ads, you don’t need your checkbook. In the average media company or newspaper, TV station whatever, I have a “two way” relationship with no one. But in the blog world, even though I am a tiny, less than energetic presence I know a number of people well enough to exchange emails with and expect not only will they read them, they’ll either give me a boost or write me back and give me honest feedback … worth a fortune, in my view.

The second reason I think every business with a web presence needs a blog is Google. As a web designer you know the continual conversations that ramble on about Google Sandbox, Google Honeymoon and whatever other real or imaginary “geek speak” is currently popular with people making explanations (excuses) for why a site isn’t indexed. based on personal experience, put WordPress on a site, make a post or three, submit it to Googles free site submission page and look at your server logs in 24 hours or so. Googlebot will have been there. search engines love blogs … how much cheaper and easier can it be?

Definitely will sooner than later. Thanks.