Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

It is quite common today to create a blog to market your brick and mortar business online.

Blogs started out as personal journals on which an individual would share their personal experience, voice their opinions, or perhaps express their passions to the internet community. Eventually the uniqueness of the blog’s ability to more deeply engage their readers became apparent. Resourceful online marketers recognized the potential this platform had for promotional advertising. Now the push is on to improve upon and harness this effective means to capture and communicate with visitors for promotional means.

Here are 5 undeniable reasons why business blogs are effective.

COST EFFICIENT ADVERTISING PLATFORMS

Blogs are inexpensive to set up compared to the cost of designing, hosting and maintaining a regular website.

SETUP IS SIMPLE

For even the most inexperienced setting up a blog couldn’t be easier. As a rule there are no technical skills or coding knowledge needed and the setup can be done in minutes. –

BLOGS CAN BE PERSONALIZED

The ability to customize your blogs appearance to better reflect your business is a feature that can’t be overlooked. Consider it a way to express yourself in a more visual manner to your visitors.

The voice of your content is another way to express yourself and will be an important factor in how your blog may stand out from the rest. Show some personality in your postings and let your readers get to know you. This should help in developing longer lasting relationships with your readers. Relax and be yourself; don’t be afraid to express your opinions since your readers will expect this.

Maintain your individuality and stand out from the masses. Remember, there is only one you so take advantage of it.

UNIQUE PROMOTIONAL FORUM

Blogs present a unique opportunity to ’suggestively’ promote to readers.

When marketing products of any kind to your subscribers you DO NOT want to hard sell them.

A relaxed and passive approach such as suggesting or recommending a particular product or service within the body of a post is appropriate. The use of banner ads or even ‘renting’ out space on your blog to advertisers is acceptable as long as this is not overdone. You want to maintain the relaxed, communal atmosphere of your blog.

The people you’re marketing products to on your blog have a ‘relationship’ with you built on trust. They originally came to your blog to read your content. They’re returning since they obviously favor how you present yourself and the subject on which you write. You must be careful to not violate the trust they’ve placed in you by pushy and/or frequent sales tactics.

SOLICIT READER OPINION

The heart and soul of just about any popular blog is the ability for visitors to leave comments. In fact this is one of the very first things a new blog should set up is a clearly defined area to leave comments. Comments should be encouraged!

Through this interaction with the readers blog owners are able to get an insight into what they are interested in or what problems they may have and want solutions to.

Fortune 500 companies pay millions to get this type of market research done now you can do it for free by monitoring reader comments.

Listen to their feedback and when appropriate, act upon it. This will only encourage more interaction and feedback from your readers.

The ability to create a blog that can effectively deliver a message, collect valuable market research or promote a product to a global audience is hard to ignore. From major corporations to the guy on the street, this cost effective promotional advertising platform presents endless business marketing possibilities only limited by the imagination.

With all of these reasons for a business blog, why wait any longer? Contact us today to set up a meeting to discuss your business blog requirements.

A Business Blog is a new approach to blending web design/blogging/SEO/SEM and Social Media marketing to create a powerful marketing tool.

Blog & Web site Working Together

We create an online presence for your business that combines the immediacy and inbound marketing potential of a blog with a standard web site. To get the best bang for your online marketing efforts both should be considered and it is best if your blog is published at least once a week. The more frequently you blog, the more the Search Engines will crawl your site.

So how do they work together?

Blogging - Your blog sits at the “front” of your website. This is your new “HOME” page. Instead of having a static page which can stay the same for weeks, months or years, you will have a page with fresh content on a regular basis. All the fresh keyword rich content you create gets published and picked up by search engines here. This gives you a platform which you can add keyword rich content to that you then promote around the web. Blogging gives you more pages on a site that can be indexed by Search Engines and allows you to rank for less popularly searched keywords but that can still drive a lot of traffic overall (what is commonly known as the “long-tail”).

Website - A “traditional website” where there are multiple tabs for the standard pages - About Us, Contact, Products, Services, Our Team, Portfolio, etc. New targeted traffic is being uncovered all the time by the blog. Sales are a numbers game, so the more traffic the more conversions to leads or sales.

Blog about one of your products or services, the search engines will pick up the post, as it is fresh content you may end up near the top of the search engine result page for the content.

A business blog combined with a traditional marketing website is a powerful marketing tool which can increase your sales and in these tough days that’s a great deal.