People read it because the solution is interesting to them, but get exposed to your business as a consequence. CandyJapan's posts on dealing with credit card fraud were how I found out about their service, for instance: https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/how-i-got-credi...
"I'm doing ____. Recently I encountered an issue: ____. I've solved it by ____ and as a result ____."
I keep hearing that, but... Has anyone here actually seen it working?
Not nitpicking, just looking for actual examples to learn from.
Joel on Software, patio11, DHH, Seth Godin, Tim Ferris, countless SEO blogs, and so on in increasing order of cringiness.
It is the whole modern melting of personality/advice/authority/promotion .
Some are really sincere some are really good at faking it.
For these guys the blogging seems nearly a full-time job though. I wonder if it's realistic to get there with a small slice of time.
Another organization was going through their contracting process with me. One of their managers later told me that when they Googled for my name they were blown away by the size of my online footprint. Most of that was simply 10 years of blogging a few times each month about whatever topics I was finding interesting.
Also based on my blogging, I've had fairly well-known companies interview me for their blogs or webinars while using descriptions like "one of the worlds leading experts in X." This was all based on years of blogging on the topic.
Another great way to be viewed as a thought leader is to write a short book. Imagine you are looking at hiring two candidates that both look good, but when you search for their names you find that one has a book for sale at Amazon on a topic of interest to your company. It is a very strong way to market one's expertise.
I'm admittedly in a somewhat unusual position, though, because I contribute to a blog about grant writing (http://www.seliger.com/blog) and basically no one else has anything useful or interesting to say about the topic. I exaggerate, but only slightly.
I don't know how well blogging works for others, but I do feel like I've seen a lot of people and companies with really lame blogs and I have to think, "Is that really doing anything for you?" I'd be curious to see anyone with data on this subject, especially because I'm not even real sure what "data" would look like in this case.
1. A blog that makes you a thought leader. People will like you, check out what you're doing, and perhaps start using your app. This is the typical way to go for b2b, or if you have a big ego :) Another pro is that if you change your app, you still (may) have your readership.
2. A blog that extends the content of your app. This fundamentally is a set of landing pages that improve your SEO. One common strategy is to talk about problems that people may have, and that your app solves. Whether you want or not to be too explicit about your app it's a matter of tastes.