If you're running a business odds are you'll have very little time to spare after completing all your required daily tasks. But if you can put aside some time each day, or even each week, for reading about your business niche it will be enormously beneficial. Needless to say, online reading keeps you abreast of the latest trends and developments in your industry, as well as new products and services, etc.
And you shouldn't confine yourself to browsing the big news sites. You should also get into the blogosphere. And while big name group blogs like the Huffington Post and Mashable are excellent, they're not the only ones out there.
You should also do lots of Googling to find lesser known but high quality blogs. There are so many of them out there, often extremely specific in their focus and insightful in their content.
While some of these bloggers are making good money from their blogs, most are not. And that's actually a good thing. It means that they're doing it for the love of it, so they are often more honest and uncompromising. As a result you can often garner useful insights from them that you would not be able to find elsewhere. These can be great for helping you develop new ideas about how best to approach your business.
Then there's the fact that you can make contact with the bloggers you admire via comments, e-mail or their social media profiles. Often these lesser known bloggers are still highly influential. If you nurture these connections they can end up benefiting you in many ways. They might link to your site, or share it on social media, for example. Or they might recommend you to others.
There are also more general benefits from immersing yourself in the blogosphere. You get a real sense of how the whole internet "content economy" works, particularly regarding search engines. You can work out which niches are saturated and which are not. These insights are useful for anyone with a business and an online presence. And they're extremely valuable if you're intending to start a blog yourself.
And you shouldn't confine yourself to browsing the big news sites. You should also get into the blogosphere. And while big name group blogs like the Huffington Post and Mashable are excellent, they're not the only ones out there.
You should also do lots of Googling to find lesser known but high quality blogs. There are so many of them out there, often extremely specific in their focus and insightful in their content.
While some of these bloggers are making good money from their blogs, most are not. And that's actually a good thing. It means that they're doing it for the love of it, so they are often more honest and uncompromising. As a result you can often garner useful insights from them that you would not be able to find elsewhere. These can be great for helping you develop new ideas about how best to approach your business.
Then there's the fact that you can make contact with the bloggers you admire via comments, e-mail or their social media profiles. Often these lesser known bloggers are still highly influential. If you nurture these connections they can end up benefiting you in many ways. They might link to your site, or share it on social media, for example. Or they might recommend you to others.
There are also more general benefits from immersing yourself in the blogosphere. You get a real sense of how the whole internet "content economy" works, particularly regarding search engines. You can work out which niches are saturated and which are not. These insights are useful for anyone with a business and an online presence. And they're extremely valuable if you're intending to start a blog yourself.