Most business owners do not understand the power of a Blog.
In fact most do not even know what a Blog is. A Blog is an interactive website that is focused on one topic. It can be any topic but do not mix topics. The more focused your Blog is the more loyal your readers will be and the easier it will be to attract the readers that you want.
The power of a Blog is in its ability to attract and interact with potential clients and current customers. Blogging software today is very easy to use and many interactive components can be easily added. Interactive components are things that draw your readers to either respond or contribute in some way, or allows you to directly interact with them. Here are some examples:
- Commenting
- Creating Polls
- Widgets that interact with Social Sites
- Online Community Building
- Forums
- Videos
- Podcasting
- Testimonial Sharing
Most people that read a Blog are looking for information. It is your job as the business owner to be able to provide the information they seek. By making your Blog easy to use, easy to find things on, and easy to interact with, you are building trust with that potential new customer. If they actually find the information they are seeking then when it comes time to make a purchase of product or services they will come back to you.
Yeah – That’s a great theory. Does it actually work?
In my personal experience, yes it does. I am a service provider and I do provide a great deal of free information on my Blog. I find that my target audience (small business owners) either do not have the technical skills to create their online marketing strategy themselves, or they do not have the time. Because I have provided working solutions on my website / Blog they have confidence that I can provide them an online strategy that will work for them, or they hire me to just do it. Either way I have made my fee – and the free content was why they initially called. When they typed in their search query my Blog had the content they were looking for (and it came up high in the search results), they liked what they read, and often call or email through the site.
Attaching a Blog to your company website has another great benefit – Search Engine Results! The nature of blogging is dynamic and changing. Articles are being posted periodically and every article has a new batch of keyword phrases. Since articles are not removed (they are archived) then the key words keep building over time. The more keywords that are relevant to your business you have on your site the more chances you have to get your site ranked high organically in the search engines. Websites by nature do not change very often. Without adding a Blog your keywords are finite – they are whatever you have in your content. Also when a site does not change search engines check it less frequently and this also affects your search engine rankings. Adding a Blog keeps your site fresh and adding to it keeps building your “long tail” keyword phrases which keeps your site high in the rankings – and brings you more customers / clients / readers.
Learn Blogging…