Need a Reason to Blog? Ask This Taxi Driver

Keith, a cab driver with a great reason for blogging.

Last week, I spent a few days in Boulder, Colorado for a conference on blogging and social media. (I need to blog my notes -- here were my initial impressions.)

It was very informative and enlightening, so I hope the conference folks don't take this as a criticism, but one of the most instructive things from my trip came from my cab driver as I was leaving: another reason why regular folks can benefit from having a blog.

After the conference, I got into a cab idling outside the hotel for a short hop into Boulder before I headed to Denver. I got to talking to the driver (his name being Keith), and when I mentioned that I was coming from a blogging conference, he said that he had a blog.

Now, just like everyone else, cabbies are people with stories to tell (though some of theirs may be more colorful than those of your average blogger), so why wouldn't they blog? There's a whole genre of taxicab bloggers -- I wrote about an NYC taxi blogger last year, and I check in from time to time on a local DC cabbie, Diary of a Mad DC Cabbie [language warning].

Do they do it to become famous? Probably not, though the NYC hack's blog led to a book deal (it's due out this summer.)

However, cabbie Keith has a more pragmatic reason for blogging: When you do a Web search on the term "boulder taxi", his blog is on the first page of search results. In fact, right now, it's the #1 result on Yahoo!, and it's the #2 listing on Google -- which also enhances AOL Search:

He didn't even have to give me the URL -- "Just search on boulder taxi." He was right.

Being on the first page of results for relevant search terms is kind of a big deal, since most folks don't like to click past the first few pages of results.

In fact, there's a whole industry set up around "SEO" (Search Engine Optimization) , which is all about how to make your Web pages show up better in search results, so you get more visitors. (It's kind of the Web equivalent of naming your dog-stretching company "AAAAA Dog Stretchers," so it shows up first in the phone listings.)

Now, search engines tend to like blogs, because they have lots of inbound and outbound links, and they update frequently. (Spammers figured this out, too, which is why you see a lot of spam blogs created just to point to other Web pages to try to boost their search rankings. It's a constant battle.)

Anyway, Keith figured out a way to make his blog work for him, to help bring in business. And he says it's working for him.

Now, this is not to say that if you start a blog, you'll suddenly start pulling in tons and tons of visitors from search engines. There's a lot of voodoo involved with SEO stuff, including who you link to, who links to you, what you write about, how often you update, how often you've been blogging, how your page is built, etc.

However, one thing blogging can help with is to provide a human face and personality to what you're doing. For example, in addition to all the other stuff about contact numbers and availability, I would probably get the sense that the Boulder Taxicab guy isn't the kind of person who might, say, try to rip me off or drive me to a vacant lot and beat me to death with a tire iron.

(Not to say that there aren't some potential pitfalls, too. If you start blogging polarizing opinions about stuff unrelated to your work -- say, politics, religion, or your penchant for tormenting fuzzy animals -- you might turn off potential customers.)

So, I hope this doesn't come across as a big advertisement for Keith's cab, since I'm not getting any kickbacks. There are many reasons to blog, and this is just another one. I had a pleasant (though short) trip, and I think I left a decent tip. Which is only fair, since I got a blog entry out of it.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: social media, icwsm, icwsm2007, boulder taxi, reasons for blogging, blogging, seo