How can a blog answer potential customer's questions, without giving away too much information?

Cellular South does a good job of maintaining a blog called the Discover Center, you can find it on their website.

If what you mean by "too much information" is giving away trade secrets, or offering so much information that potential customers never feel the need to contact you for a consultation, then the trick is to offer only enough information to whet their appetites. In other words, exercise restraint in dispensing information.

When I am wearing my web seminar leader's hat, I often ask groups of small business owners and managers what they believe the mission of their websites to be. The overwhelming majority answer? To dispense information about their companies, products or services. The truth is that the primary mission for a commercial site should be to convince potential visitors to buy, and information is only meant to effect that conversion.

A secondary mission of a good commercial site is customer service - value added information and services for existing customers.

Rob Wood
HyperGold Web Services
www.hypergold.com

Regardless of the amount of information you present, there are always those that will take and use the information without consulting you.

However, the internet is a huge place and if you make your offers attractive, those just coming for information can end up getting you to do it for them.

The more information you deliver, the more traffic you are bound to attract.

best,
Reg

http://NBS-SEO.com
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Hi Emmet - This is a terrific question because it brings out something very subtle about blogging that a lot of companies don't get -- that blogging is more about building relationships with your customers than it is about sharing technical information per se.

Think of a blog post as being an open letter to the world. It's personal, engaging and a little less formal but it IS a public piece.

Your readers (customers and prospects) read blogs to learn more about you, your company, the culture of your company and how they will be treated than they do to learn about your product.

In other words, the information that your customers REALLY want to get from your blog is to find out whether they like you and want to do business with you. So while technical information is part of that mix -- it's not the ONLY part of that mix.

My recommendation is to write your blog posts from the perspective of having a personal face-to-face conversation with a prospect or a customer. Talk about the benefits of your product or service in terms of examples. Talk about the experience your customers can expect in working with you.

This is my favorite example of a well done company blog and a post written by their CEO - http://fanminder.com/fanminder-offers-data-starting-to-be-available.html