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Is blogging a big part of your online marketing strategy?
How important is it to have a blog as part of your online marketing strategy? Is it worth the time and effort? What are some benefits that only a blog can provide?
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6 Answers
Before you look at the value proposition of blogging as a marketing strategy, I think it's important to understand WHY you blog. When I talk to my clients about blogging the first question I get is “who’s going to read it?” They are overwhelmed by the blogosphere and wonder that their blog will be just a drop of water in a very large sea of content. It’s a reasonable question and a reasonable concern. It’s just the wrong question.
So what is the right question? First we need to understand the function and value of a blog post as it relates to promoting yourself or your business. I always describe a blog as a conversation over a cup of coffee: a conversation with a colleague, a conversation with a customer or perhaps a conversation with a prospect.
- Conversations With Your Prospects: When you meet with a prospect do you pull out your marketing literature and recite it verbatim? I hope not. So what DO you say?
My guess is it would be a variation on a traditional sales approach: exchange pleasantries, talk about his business, get an idea of his goals, challenges and needs. The next step would likely be to identify areas where your product or service can help him with his goals, challenges and needs.
You’ll explain your understanding of his problems and suggest ways you could help. You’ll cite some use cases and specific examples.
That is a blog post.
- Conversations With Your Customers: Your customer calls you up to ask for some advice. You listen carefully to the issue. What’s your next step? Mail out some marketing material? Maybe, but most likely you’ll proceed to dole out your wisdom in the effective use of your product for her particular situation. Or maybe there’s a complimentary product or service you recommend.
That is a blog post.
- Conversations With Your Colleagues: If you’re like me you like to talk about issues relating to your industry with co-workers, colleagues and other industry professionals. Where is the market going? What are the challenges? How can we improve? How do we educate the marketplace?
Those are blog posts.
Who’s going to read your blog posts? Your prospects, customers and colleagues, for starters. What makes a blog different than your conversation over a cup of coffee is one simple factor: sharing. When your customer gets off the phone after a great conversation with you, where she received some great advice, she might be excited enough to tell some of her co-workers and colleagues. But the impact will be diminished. She can’t share your conversation. Ah, but she can share a blog post.
It is true that for some people creating high-volume blog sites is a source of revenue. But for the average person looking to leverage blogging as part of a business strategy, you already have your audience. It’s the people you already know and with whom you already do business.
Bottom line: People love to share. Jokes, recipes, breaking news. Anything interesting. I continue to talk about content as the currency of the new millennium. The market for quality content is insatiable and sharing is the grease that lubricates the gears of the new economy. Old economy vehicles like print media are failing. Is it because the content is not good? No, it’s because you can’t easily share it.
Sharing is what gets your message out beyond your immediate circle. It’s like having thousands of people standing behind your prospect/customer/colleague as you have that conversation over a cup of coffee.
So the question is not “who’s going to read it?”
What’s the right question?
“Can you write something they will want to share?”
Quality blogs provide information to website visitors. Such blogs help communicate a company’s brand, product, or service offering in a less formal manner that is very similar to a discussion or conversation. They are snippets of content that help educate and communicate to potential prospects or existing customers. They are extremely valuable to overall Internet marketing if written in the correct manner and to the correct audience.
In addition to providing website visitors with relevant information, blogs help provide fresh website content for Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. Google likes blogs – plain and simple. Blogs help drive search engine traffic and they are worth every effort put forth into the writing and posting of content.
I've been blogging for about years and as cheesy as it sounds, I cannot imagine a world without blogs.
One word of caution is to understand that not everyone can blog. I've helped some clients really master the art of blogging, but that is not always the case. I've tried to help other clients blog, but in some cases, it is just not within the person's DNA to whip up a good blog entry. You can cultivate a blogger's talent so they become a better blogger, but you cannot force a non-blogger to be a blogger. I've tried with a few and after months of frustration I realized my efforts were completely futile.
I'm also a big fan of Blogs - it allows you and almost forces you to keep posting relavant content about your services - this alone will help attract visitors to your site as they see that your site is constantly updated with new material.
The SEO benefits of running a blog are also enormous, and like Rebecca said - Google loves blogs (so long as they are not just full of spam). If nothing else, a Blog should be discussed as part of your SEO strategy.
Ryan
http://LDPWebSolutions.com
I think blogging can provide you with a fantastic way to increase your online footprint across other mediums as well, not just the blogsphere.
For my product I use a blog to communicate our daily promotions, inform about changes, educate about new arrivals etc. While the blog works as an excellent stand alone communication channel for us, it has also been a great help in maximising our use of other social media channels through various software that can distribute your blog content to Facebook, Twitter and the likes (via tweetdeck, hootsuite, networked blogs etc)
This connection has not only helped us keep our customers updated on everything and anything, it helps us enter "their" online space (their Facebook account) and giving them the option of seeing our news when they want and without having to actually visiting our website every day (except for when they want to make a purchase.)
Blogging should be part of a company's online marketing strategy because it provides a more casual and interactive opportunity to connect with customers and/or consumers. A business, whether B2B or B2C or even a non-profit, can provide news as soon as it happens, product or service updates, or regular commentary from a CEO/President or other members of the senior management/leadership team, and specialists within a company can also share their department news or product developments. But what makes blogs such an important part of an online marketing strategy is that a blog invites feedback. Existing customers and prospective customers are invited to share their comments, ideas, complaints, suggestions, etc. This variety of feedback in blog format is invaluable to a company - Twitter's 140 characters can be limiting, Facebook's sign-in component can be limiting, and YouTube's video component may not be applicable. As a result, blogs are the easiest form of company-customer interaction.
Things to keep in mind when creating and maintaining a blog:
* Write in prose that sounds like your company - for example, don't use language that company reps wouldn't use when talking with customers or prospects.
* While a number of people within the company might submit articles to include on the blog, assign one person or a specific team to oversee maintenance of the blog so that there is consistency for the blog's "voice."
* Maintain consistency between a company's main website and the blog - the look and feel of the blog must be consistent with a company's overall brand.
Blogging is a magic tool for building the online credibility and more, and it can play a very big part of your online strategy....
but before investing in it, make sure that u will write for your targeted profiles, moreover make sure that ur targeted profiles are reading
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