Reasons why blogging for business is a must
Image courtesy Andy Piper via Flickr
Blogs will continue to thrive in a world of meaningful marketing.
They’re really no different then a newspaper.
You can use a blog to inform, educate and connect with potential customers.
Yet I’m amazed to see how many businesses don’t have a blog or have stopped blogging altogether.
The rise of Web 2.0
When blogs first popped up around the late 90’s they seemed to be the rage. This was the beginning of the second generation of the internet where everyone had a voice.
Noticing this a lot of businesses jumped on the blog bandwagon. Most did so without a plan, purpose or meaning.
I’m sure many of those businesses wanted to use the blog as a way to market to their customers more. Since social media has come a long and taken over the world, they’ve stopped blogging.
Heck some businesses didn’t even bother to blog and opted straight for social media.
Obviously I can see why. Your customers are on Facebook and Twitter so it’s natural to be where they are.
That’s all fine and dandy but if you want to build a loyal online community it’s all about a blog.
No matter what situation you’re in with your business, blogging is a most important component of social media.
Why? Because your blog is the foundation and your home base.
Come on home
I use the odd reference to love and relationships when it comes to online marketing. This is another one.
When you’re in a relationship and you want to “score” it’s all about getting to home base right?
That’s the same mentality you should adopt when it comes to online marketing. If you want your customer to “score” and you want the relationship with them to prosper into something loyal, you want them to get to your home base.
In this case your website is your home base.
Time to check out the goods
If you’ve done your job using social media correctly – which is something I will talk a lot about in the future – and managed to get some followers, people will naturally check out your goods aka your home base.
This will give them sometime to browse around and see what you’re all about. Now there are a lot of aspects that go into what a fully functional website should offer. I will be blogging and discussing those in my newsletter which means you should probably sign up for it
For the sake of this post it’s all about the importance of a blog at your home base.
What a blog can do for your website?
So if this customer checks out your site and you have nothing to engage them with, you’ve lost your chance to;
- Educate them on your products or services
- Give them more background information about your company and why they should do business with you
- Provide you more feedback about your product or service
- Interact with them
- Display your knowledge and expertise
- Become an authority in your industry
- Collect their contact details for further relationship building and marketing
- Get your website and business shared or spread via word of mouth
- Most importantly build a prosperous and loyal relationship
I will be talking about all of these points and how having a blog plays a pivotal role in meaningful marketing. But this post is to simply get the idea in your head that a blog is a foundation of any good online marketing “strategy”. I hate to use the word strategy here because online marketing comes down to caring about your customer.
Blogs are also important because of the content creature that many people are apart of.
Content consumption
When people are on social networks they’re doing three things.
- Playing games
- Checking out pictures and chatting with friends
- Engaging with content
The third point is where your blog and business can thrive. Here’s a crazy fact about how much content the world is producing every day thanks to ability to easily create and share it with other. We as a society create as much content in two days as we did from the beginning of time up up until 2003.
Eric Schmidt the former CEO of Google was the one who stated it, pretty trustworthy source I would say! That was 17 months ago and I can guarantee more content is being created day by day. If you create valuable and meaningful content, people will share it.
If you’ve made it this far you I’ve done my job. Blogging is still a big time player in the online marketing game.
I already talked about why simply being online isn’t enough in 2012. Blogging and creating valuable content gives you the right to earn more followers. It also helps to set you apart from your competition.
Be sure to sign up for my email list so that you get all my updates whether they’re on blogging or other meaningful marketing ideas.
So does your business have a blog? If so, what’s the link?
If your business doesn’t have a blog, what is the reason?