Problogger Diary

As you have been reading this blog, you have probably been thinking about some of the ways in which you could use a Blog for your own business – perhaps with a view to reaching new audiences, improve visibility on the web and their interactions with customers, as well as actually increase sales. It is now an important part of the online marketing for your business!

Don’t forget that a Business Blog also gives you, your company and those who work for it, a place to collect and share ideas and relevant information with your customers and prospects. This in turn generates mutual trust and builds to a relationship which is more like a partnership than the typical supplier-customer sales relationship.

The benefits that you can enjoy are:

• Develop your position and your reputation as an expert - Demonstrate your knowledge, expertise and experience on matters relating to your industry and give yourself the chance to show your expert position in your specialism.
• Business Differentiation - a blog will give you the opportunity to show how your business and services differ from (and are hopefully superior to) those of your competition. Done well, it will set you apart in terms of the benefits you offer.
• Search Engine Marketing & Visibility – Higher rankings and therefore greater visibility on the main Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN because of the updated content, great (automatic) structure and the focused content which will attract Search Engines and readers alike.
• Creating a real dialogue with those who matter - You have the opportunity and the ideal tool to start to open up new and very real communications channels with your customers, prospects, partners and suppliers.
• Public Relations & Press Releases – While not the ideal use for blogs from the point of view of blogging purists, business blogs remain fabulous marketing tools to distribute and then promote your company information and press releases.
• Lead Generation – additional visitors, better positioning and improved search engines ranking all provide the chance to develop an increased lead generation opportunity. (Lots more ideas available – drop me a line at blogappraisal@theblogcoach.co.uk and I’ll explain how!)
• Brand Awareness - An ideal channel through which to put your brand in front of the customer and communicate what it stands for – you could be a small company or multinational, either way you are strengthening your online position.
• Educational Marketing - Show how your products and services can solve your customers problems rather than rely on interruption marketing and “in your face” selling. You could also look at this in terms of relational marketing because that’s exactly what you’re creating, better relationships with your marketplace.
• Internal Communications – a blog is an excellent tool to help to share information easily within your company, manage projects, develop teams and hugely improve the internal communications.

A Blog is also very easy to use because you can write using a “Word” type of interface which means that you do not need a web designer to put information on the web for you any more - anyone in your organisation with access to the internet (and permission, of course!) can update and add information as required!

Posted by Problogger Diary at Tuesday, March 31, 2009