I’m sure that by now everybody knows what a blog is and the speed that it has captured a global audience is quite remarkable. However, many don’t realise the potential for a blog to be an incredibly powerful marketing tool for businesses. With the capacity to drive traffic to a main website, generate product sales, create advertising income and be a customer service tool, a blog is fast becoming part of the marketing strategy for even the largest of companies.
A blog is able to humanise your business. It is all well and good having a professionally designed website with great specifications for all your products but what many businesses seem to miss is a relationship with their customers. Because it is far more informsl than a usual website, it is possible to write in your own voice, that of the company and show the world that there is a person behind the products. Studies have found that just by putting aa photograph of the managing director on a website, people start to relate to the company and are reassured that there is someone there who is capable of catering for their needs. All in all, it allows a business to project much more personality into the online market than a regular sales site does.
The blog can often act as a sort of interactive FAQ whereby customer can ask questions and you can answer them in an instant. How many times have you sent an email to a company via their website and waited weeks for a result? Well, using a blog, all it takes is for customers to submit their questions where they will be visible to all and you can go on there and interactively answer them. How nice would it be to get your questions answered straight away and how many websites actually do this? The answer is great and not many. A blog is a great place to set up how-to articles as well. For example, say your company is a supplier to the building trade. Why not put up articles on how to choose the correct nails or screws for a job? It will saving them having to spend time looking it up and give proof that your company knows their stuff, creating a greater likelihood for sales.
Perhaps above all else, a blog is a fantastic way to drive traffic to the company website which is ultimately where you want customers to visit. This can be done by re-directing them through links, special offers and product features. Using tools like Google Analytics you will be able to easily monitor the click through rates from the blog and see what sort of effect it has on sales. The most effective technique is to edit your keywords campaign and links so that they go through to specific pages. You can drastically improve the search engine rankings of both your blog and website. Just think how nice it would look if you enter a Google Search and the top 5 or 6 results are from your company.
The important thing to remember about blogging for business is that the information must be kept relevant. If you post valuable information on a regular basis it can give a serious boost to your credibility and establish the business as something of an expert in their field. It is very easy to get carried away with blogging and go off topic. Unlike a website, the blog has license to change on a regular basis so is very easy to keep fresh and interesting.
Make proper use of the Internet to promote your blog. There are blog sites growing by the day where you can post or ‘ping’ the latest entries and get them ranked such as Technorati or Ice Rocket. Use these sites to comment on other blogs and write your own blog address as a signature. The more blogs that your name appears on the better. Think about writing reviews on sites such as Amazon on products which relate to your industry. Post your blog address on the reviews.
When starting a blog it is best to wait until there is substantial amount of information within it before starting any advertising or promotion for it to potential customers. If the content isn’t interesting or relevant to the target audience then it quite simply won’t work. Make sure that there are a number of company articles to post before the blog goes life. What use is a blog with one article to anyone? It’s surprising how easy it is to find things to write about. You could do a piece on industry news, product updates, interviews with directors or owners, promotions, offers or personal insights. Just remember to update it regularly to keep your audience coming back. On top of that, fresh content also boosts your search engine rankings.
It takes as little as five minutes to start a blog but of course, to develop it into a powerful strategic marketing tool can take much longer. It takes a great deal of dedication but is well worth it in the long run with the numerous customer service and ultimately sales benefits that it brings.
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