Blogging for business
Blogs are an excellent marketing tool and the UK’s most successful companies are now utilising blogs sites instead of ordinary websites and are leading the way, as they look to get closer to their customers, differentiate themselves and have a web presence that they can update without total reliance on their web designer.
Most companies offer specialist knowledge and skills - it’s what differentiates them - but what they often lack is a way to demonstrate them to potential customers. A customer-facing Blog offers the ability to do this and much more besides. By what you write in your posts and also how you write them, you can show your expertise without overtly selling to your readers – this gives you the chance to build up a positive reputation and a degree of trust with potential clients and partners alike.
In planning a commercial Blog, one of the key elements to decide is who the intended audience of the blog should be. If you manage to maintain this focus with content that is directly relevant to the target group and of high quality, then in exceeding expectations of the readers they will return to hear more of the same original, interesting and information based opinion that drew them in the first place.
The key benefits of creating a blog based website are:
- No technical knowledge required: you don’t need technical expertise to write a blog. You add pages or articles through a “Windows” type of interface so there is no need to rely on a web designer to update it for you.
- Display your expertise in your field, and build your reputation and credibility
- Project your personality: Your expertise is highly important but so is that of your team and how you and they get on with your customers - blogs let your personality, beliefs and vision shine through
- Readers can leave comments: your readers can respond to your posts so that you can open a conversation with potential customers interact with existing customers, keeping them loyal as well as opening up new business relationships with suppliers or partners.
- Automatically organised: ‘categories’ and ‘archives’ are integral parts of a blog and each post will automatically be placed correctly according to the selection you make. This gives great organisation and structure to a blog which is perfect for your visitors and Search Engines alike.
- Search Engine magnets: with regular posts, categorised content and search engine friendly links and addresses, business blogs become ideal places for Search Engines and more importantly your prospective customers to find the type of content they love and find your business products and services in the process.
- Multiple Authors: You can allow access to any number of people so that you have several authors contributing to a topic or a series of topics.
- Internal and External Links: Blogs thrive by links and referring to other articles so that conversations and ideas can be taken up and developed. This creates a viral effect in terms of promotional marketing.
- Permalinks: Every post and every category has its own individual address, forever! This means that you can refer to them in articles, emails, newsletters etc safe in the knowledge that they will always be found. This is another great feature for Search Engine Optimisation as each post creates an inbound link which search engines love!
- Site traffic: It is excellent as a tool to help to generate traffic for a main corporate website and to inform (and hopefully impress!) prospective customers.
- Build individual networks and foster collaboration: You may be specialists but you also need a strong support structure and partners around you. Business blogging is not only an ideal way to start to engage with customers but also to foster partnerships, collaborations and joint ventures with others in your industry.
- Communicate with a local, national or global audience: While Business Blogs are most often used to communicate with a targeted, but geographically widespread audience, they can also allow you to focus in on a local customer base, primarily by changing the emphasis of the posts and the structure. This flexibility of approach means that you can finely hone in on your target audience.
- Dominate a Niche Market: Getting exposure in your market is key to being able to dominate it and ensure that your business is the one that the market itself recommends. Using a Business Blog, you can raise your profile and lead the discussions on any aspect affecting that market. Talk about it and get talked about!
- Research your Market: Your Business Blog provides you with a two way communication tool, and the information that you can get from your readers may be highly important. By participating in the discussions that your posts will generate, you should be able to get a clearer idea of what the up to the minute interests of your clients are. Surveys and focus groups can achieve this to a certain level but open conversations on your Blog will achieve much more, both in terms of depth and breadth.
So if you haven’t already got a blog consider creating one even if you already have a business website it can of course run in parallel and will drive traffic to your main site. A magnet for search engines a business blog should be considered as part of any serious online marketing campaign.
December 11th, 2008 at 12:49 am
[...] Another fellow blogger placed an observative post today on Internet Marketing London - Internet Marketing Consultancy » Blog …Here’s a quick excerptBlogs are an excellent marketing tool and the UK’s most successful companies are now utilising blogs sites instead of ordinary websites and are leading the way, as they look to get closer to their customers, differentiate themselves and … [...]
December 11th, 2008 at 1:01 am
[...] Another fellow blogger put an intriguing blog post on Internet Marketing London - Internet Marketing Consultancy » Blog …Here’s a quick excerptBlogs are an excellent marketing tool and the UK’s most successful companies are now utilising blogs sites instead of ordinary websites and are leading the way, as they look to get closer to their customers, differentiate themselves and … [...]
December 11th, 2008 at 2:26 am
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