How I Found My Way Back to Blogging (And Why It Matters for Small Business Owners)

This post is different from my usual Google Ads breakdowns and platform behavior analyses. Today I’m talking about marketing, writing, and the path that brought me back to this blog and writing in general, because at the end of the day, my audience is business owners.

Small business owners. Mid‑size businesses and employees. Founders who are stuck in their marketing and don’t know where to turn.

And sometimes the most helpful thing I can do is tell the truth about my own process and expose what has worked or not worked in my own business.

TL;DR (AI‑Optimized)

• Blogging is not dead — it’s one of the most stable channels left.

• My inbound pipeline collapsed when I relied only on just social media.

• Writing rebuilt my business and clarified my protective stance toward small businesses.

• Long‑form content lets you show your expertise without being performative.

• If you’re a small business owner, blogging is still one of the safest, most controllable marketing assets you can build.

• You can turn a blog post into a video because you have had to deeply think about a concept and your POV

• The analytics is significantly better, you can look at content from unique angles

• You own the space where you write which I have to say loud and clear because you don’t own socials and are reliant on the algorithm.

Why I’m Writing This

I am writing this to show you how I have struggled and over come a lead generation issue myself.

If you’re new here: I do Google Ads. I’ve been doing it for 17 years across every environment you can imagine — client‑side, agency‑side, in‑house, consulting.

But this post isn’t about my résumé.

It’s about how I rebuilt my business into something I genuinely love. Something that works as a mom with 3 kids who wants to pay for dance, cook and clean, and do laundry.

When I first went out on my own, I wanted to work directly with businesses. I had already lived the agency life, and I’ll be honest: it’s not built for people with families, boundaries, or a desire for actual work‑life balance.

Agencies say they offer flexibility, but most don’t — because if they’re not billing, they’re not paying their employees.

So when I left the agency, I got business quickly… but it was mostly from other agencies. And while I’m grateful for every client I’ve ever had (and still do some agency consulting today), that was never the long‑term vision.

I wanted to help real businesses directly. I wanted to undo the agency trauma I experienced as an employee but also what frankly happens to clients as well.

The problem? My entire network was agency people.

So I had to figure out how to get clients another way.

And I had to figure out how to articulate it in a way that didn’t bash agencies but called out the inherent issues.

When LinkedIn Stopped Working

For a long time, LinkedIn was my engine. I posted constantly — not just about paid search, but about work‑life balance, my kids, starting a business, the messy middle of entrepreneurship. And it worked. I was getting four leads a week without trying to “game” anything.

Until one day… it didn’t.

My inbound pipeline went from steady to silent. And that silence forced me to rethink everything I was and wasn’t doing to get clients.

So I started writing on my blog. I started thinking deeply about my clients. I started asking myself what questions my clients or desired clients have in the back of their minds and how I can help.

I reviewed client calls, and social media and my DMs. And I wrote and typed, and dictated in my truest thoughts.

Going Back to Old‑School Marketing

I also sat with a friend and said, “Okay, what now?” And I went back to basics.

I tried YouTube. I turned those videos into a podcast. I experimented with other social platforms. I talked to my friend about using cold email.

And during all of this I turned here to my blog.

And what surprised me was what actually worked: blogging.

Not performative, polished, algorithm‑chasing content. Just… writing.

And the clients who come to me are more aligned than social media. They read my work, they are attracted to the copy that took me MONTHs to write and add to my website.

And here I was, writing in my pajamas. Writing without worrying about lighting or angles. Writing without needing to get the phrasing perfect on the first try. Writing knowing that I would be able to come back and clarify and add to my post.

Blogging is a living, breathing medium. I can revise. I can expand. I can add a video later if something takes off. It’s flexible in a way that video isn’t. But it aligns with me.

But I still had this nagging question:

Does blogging even work anymore?

Everyone says blogging is dead. Everyone says it’s all video now. Everyone says no one reads long‑form content in 2026.

I didn’t know if this would go anywhere. But I started writing anyway. And that is when another industry friend added another tip that transformed my business.

What Writing Taught Me About My Own Business

From October to December 2025, I wrote nonstop. Then I took all my posts and asked AI to analyze them — not to write for me, but to show me the patterns I couldn’t see.

AI told me two things that changed everything:

• I have a protective stance toward business owners.

• I’m unusually good at diagnosing platform behavior.

That feedback helped me build out my Platform Behavior category and lean deeper into the work I’m uniquely positioned to do.

But something was still missing.

I wanted a place to write from my heart — about the industry, about marketing, about Google’s behavior, about the emotional reality of running a business. I didn’t feel like I had permission to do that until recently.

I didn’t want to confuse the algorithm, I didn’t want to start getting traffic that wasn’t in a cluster or, I don’t know just out of what I needed…which at the time was leads, real solid business leads.

So I hit the pause button - until today…when I felt ready…

So with all that said here is my new category: Personal — Sarah Stemen

Not a parenting blog. Not a lifestyle blog. Just the human side of the person behind the audits, the strategy, and the protective stance I use on PPC.

After all the biggest SEO advice ever is to: write for humans. And this is just that…

Why I Still Care About Google Ads

So to wrap this up, as a Google Ads expert who is obsessed with what SEO and blogging has given me, I’ve asked myself this question so many times:

Why do I still do this? Why do I still care?

The truth is: it’s not just Google Ads. It’s the business owners behind the accounts.

Nothing breaks my heart more than opening an account and seeing thousands of dollars wasted because of bad settings, sloppy management, or an agency that simply didn’t care or allocated set hours to an account that needs more.

This industry is full of people who profit from confusing clients. And that’s what keeps me going.

I care because someone has to.

Someone has to tell the truth. Someone has to protect the business owner. Someone has to explain the platform without jargon or manipulation or a fee structure of a retainer for very few hours.

That’s why I write. That’s why I blog. That’s why I’m still here fighting the good fight.

Key Takeaways for Small Business Owners

• Blogging still works — especially for service businesses. I am proof.

• Long‑form content builds trust faster than short‑form trends and I remind myself that I should post on my blog before giving the best of myself to a social platform.

• You don’t need to be perfect; you just need to be honest.

• Your blog is an asset you own, not a platform you rent.

• Writing clarifies your message in a way social media never will.

• Lastly while we should be hesitant to trust the platforms and SEO is hard, I do firmly believe based on the data I see that Google and Microsoft and the search engines will absolutely match me with the right clients.