All of us on this business community are seeking new ways to promote and sell our wares.  We know the value of Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM), but do we all understand the value of business blogging as it related to WOM?

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point.  For the last week or ten days I’ve been biting at the bit to write this article, but I wanted to wait until I finished the book.  Not only did Malcom ask the questions why some ideas took off, but he answered societal questions on what stifles momentum.  To bring Malcolm’s thoughts into perspective for us business folks in Portland Oregon, I’ll ask a question that directly pertains to US.

Why blog on Portland Business Community?

“The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.“

America is suffering through a very difficult recession. Without arguing politics, let’s assume for a moment that times are still bad and maybe getting worse.  Most, if not all, of us are members of “other” networking groups (chamber’s, lead sharing, associations, etc.) and our goal is to build new connections with other people who may need our services or know someone who needs our service.

Those of us who’ve been around a while know the “Card-Droppers” as me centered folks who will almost never carry our message to their network; but instead attend the groups for just long enough to fail at getting any business before moving on to the next failed networking venture.  I call this process Group Cold Calling.  Work a room, make the same sales pitch over and over and hope that some business is gained.

A Better Approach to networking

Get to know the business people around you, help them solve their problems and they’ll be your very best friend–helping bring you LOTS of new business.

Business Blogging allows you to help people you’ve never met; building relationships with people who find your idea over the internet.

PortlandBusinessCommunity.com, being a FREE business blogging site for business people means your audience may have found your words because they were brought to the site by search phrase liked to another article.

PortlandBusinessCommunity.com, using Malcolm’s terms, is a Connector.  The authors on this site are the Mavens and the search engine become the Salesmen.

Unlike your elevator speech at a chamber meeting, your words in your business blog article live forever in the sales channel (i.e. search engines).