Blog: Practical for business!
The business blog has become a practical Web marketing tool that can save its owner thousands of dollars, while providing excellent and unique business opportunities with just a simple click of the mouse. Blogs have come to be known as user-friendly, customized and flexible media for disseminating useful information and posting effective propmotions of the owner’s products, services and/or brand cognizance.
Companies that engage in business blogging are considered to have a definite edge over their competitors, although that edge is not always immediately evident; but some of those advantages that can be recognized and sufficiently described are evidenced below.
Word-of-Mouth is the first such advantage and was identified in a survey conducted in the early years of blogging. It was determined at the time that 14 million blogs were in existence and 80,000 more were being added each day; but perhaps most stunning revelation during those years, was the finding which indicated that about 30 percent of the 50 million Web users at that time were blog readers.
Essential to the business blog
Of course the Web-use growth rate has exploded since those early days, but can you imagine how much benefit your company would have derived if your products and services were advertised through blogs even back then? And today, as was true then, information spreads so quickly via the Web that the advantages are even more pronounced, especially if an impressive write-up accompanies a particular product or service. Word-of-Mouth, if used strategically smart can ensure that your blogs will be shared with hundreds of potential customers.
Awareness and loyalty is another of those advantages of business blogging, but is dependent on open communication with the business’ customers, if that business expects to create trust and loyalty among them. In other words, being there (available) to provide prompt and satisfactory responses to customers’ questions and comments make them all the more willing to sample the business’ products and services.
Feedback is of course, a valuable resource of any business, and feedback from the readers of a business blog might be even more of an asset to that business because blogs have been proven to be good for product research and reviews in that regard. If you own a business, it would be easier to improve on your products by observing your customers’ thinking and behavioral patterns via your business blog; and you would also be able to take immediate action to allay your customers’ concerns.
The daily trade show effect
The community halo-effect, although not as distinctly identifiable as feedback, is nonetheless a desired result of the business blogger; because, as has been said on more than one occasion, bloggers are reasonable, friendly and helpful people who are more than willing to create a blogosphere of comments regarding any product they like, and if the product is yours, you get that benefit. The only thing you have to do is embrace ongoing events and take an active part in the culture which should lead to product being considered in their next stop to the supermarket.
For better marketing results, actively promote your business blogs by submitting them to blog search sites and directories; but be mindful to paste your blog URL in with the title and description of your blogs; and be sure that your blogs contain exclusive information with value and are kept updated so as to keep readers visiting your site and reading your blog; and before moving on to the next site, clicking again for updates.
A business blog is like a setup booth set up daily in the biggest trade show on earth with marketing possibilities just around the corner waiting to pump up sales volume. Add to that the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, which are as important as anything else mentioned already; and when used in conjunction with your blogs, RSS feeds will likely improve your business bottom line. Use effective keyword phrases to generate high ranking status in the search engine traffic, which will also help to improve the chances of people finding your website leading to your blog and increasing traffic which means more potential sales.
Setting up the blogging project
For this aspect of business blogging to be successful, you can use RSS for news update feeds, which can be read through the RSS reader application. This is a very useful tool for business blogs as well as internet marketing blogs. But if you are already convinced of the potential of a business blog for marketing and targeting sales increases, your company’s readiness for blogging should be complete. However, you must be in tuned with your company’s business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve them.
Consider the following when setting up your business blogging project:
1. Many blogs are dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, so include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based to get a better idea.
2. Setup several test blogs right away.
If your initial effort with blogs worked well, you can start to set up your blogging enterprise along the lines of these modest suggestions:
Blogging setup considerations
1. Study blog design – Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your graphic designer to create a design and layout your blog site to match the company’s identity and needs.
2. Choose a topic – Its good to have a line-up of topics you want for your blogs, but be sure they are relevant to your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness, since results could go contrary to those objectives.
3. Remember the following safety measures in blogging:
- legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities;
- corporate communication and legal department are responsible in educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business;
- create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information are allowed to be made public;
- avoid outright marketing blog or you will shy away your readers;
- make content updated, relevant and fresh;
- reinforce the company’s core values; and,
- encourage employees to use it.
4. Start blogging – complete 20 posts before going to marketing.
5. Regularly monitoring – Keep tabs on the coming ins and outs of readers and get updates. Then, measure your results.
6. Adjust if needed – You can always play with your designs in the blog site as long as it remains to match the company’s identity.
7. Strive to be great – Be consistent with your topic at all times.
8. Topic variation – Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.
9. Schedule updates regularly – Monday, Wednesday and Thursday would be best to update blogs.
Once you have done all these things, you can then ultimately enjoy the benefits of business blogging.
As a token of our appreciation the free e-book titled, Storytelling Marketing can be yours if you have any interest in the art of storytelling. All you have to do is download it here, enjoy the reading and learn how storytelling can be a powerful ally in any business or marketing pursuit!
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