Blogging for Business
“Should we have a blog?” is among the most popular questions many ITSPs ask their marketing companies. The answer is usually a completely unqualified “yes.” What a money-making opportunity!
“Should we have a blog?” is among the most popular questions many ITSPs ask their marketing companies. The answer is usually a completely unqualified “yes.” What a money-making opportunity!!!! For the marketer.
First Answer These Questions About Your Blog
The correct, non-self-serving answer to the blog question can be obtained by first answering a few important questions:
1) Are you willing to maintain a constant publishing schedule for your blog?
2) Do you plan to be very demanding about the quality of the content?
3) Are you willing to promote your blog every way you can?
4) Do you understand how a blog delivers results to you?
5) Do you understand the goals of your blog?
Let’s begin with the last question. What are the goals of your blog? How do you achieve them?
Goal of Your Blog
The goal for each blogpost is to deliver something thought-provoking and interesting for your readers to learn about. The more they learn the likelier they are to come back week after week to read your blog, and the more likely they are to share it with others, thus growing your readership even more.
The ultimate goal of regularly publishing your blog is to build a readership, and then to continue to grow that leadership, and grow it, and grow it.
In your blog you’re going to address many topics that may be of interest to some of your readers. When you’ve earned your readership and they’re coming back to read week after week, they will eventually encounter a topic that is of real interest to them. Something they’ve been considering putting to work for their company!
At that moment your reader converts into a customer!
When that customer contacts you to discuss your blog topic in more depth, they are already confident that you know what you’re talking about. You are qualified!! Now you simply provide the details they need, create a complete solution for them, and close the deal. Successful blog results achieved.
Forget Rising Above the Noise
It’s no longer possible. There’s just too much marketing noise out there on the internet, the social networks, and elsewhere. You’ll never distinguish yourself from all that noise.
Instead, leverage your blog to get your readers to cut through all that noise for you and recommend your blog to their associates, friends, clients, and others. These referrals will build your readership, and thus your potential customer pool, faster than anything else!
Promoting Your Blog
There are many ways to effectively promote your blog to qualified readers:
· Featuring your blog on your website connects it to all the other marketing messaging featured there. It’s likely your reader will spot a banner or other ad of interest to them.
· Your most recent blog post can be advertised on every document your company issues. Letters from salespeople, invoices, statements, anything that gets in front of your customers.
· Consider offering your blogposts as free content to local newspapers and other publications. Most of them are always hungry for content, and always prefer that free pricetag!
· Send your posts to editors of local and regional publications, encouraging them to “pick it up.”
· Send an email to your entire email list on the same day every month in the middle of the month. In this email, recap the recent blog posts in a conversational way, including a link to each post. At the end of the email list the posts coming in the weeks ahead.
· Encourage your vendor-partners to talk up your blog when visiting local clients. Offer to feature them in a blog post that they can then talk up to promote both the blog and themselves!
This is not a one-time shot. This activity must be kept up continually because it only produces its maximum return over time and repetition.
What NOT to Do with Your Blog
Your blog is not also your newspage, or your event announcement page, or anything else other than a source of interesting, valuable information for your readers. When they see news or pitches or announcements they almost immediately turn off and stop coming back for more each week. You’ve lost a reader. That is the very LAST thing you want to do, because every reader has the potential to lead you to many more readers, and every reader added is a potential customer.
Don’t feature someone else’s content! There are many marketers and other sources who will furnish you with blog posts at a very low price. They also offer these to everyone else who does what you do. It is likely your customer will receive the same content from someone else.
Besides that, one of the most important functions of your blog is to convince your readers that you really know your stuff and they can depend on you to do a great job for them. The content must be your own, your intelligence. Your smarts. Your value proposition.
Your Blog Must Be SOMEBODY’s Job #1
There are many readers who check your blog when they first visit your site, and scroll to the last blog post to see how old it is. If it’s not recent, they see you as inconsistent, outdated, and not on top of your game. Better to remove the blog completely from your site than to leave it untouched for long periods of time.
If you’re going to take fullest advantage of the power of your blog to create new customers, somebody must own responsibility for keeping the blog interesting, and keeping it current.
If you don’t have anyone you can assign that responsibility, consider engaging a creator of compelling content with decades of technology experience, proven effective content creation, and the responsibility to keep your blog delivering results consistently. Consider Senior Resultant Howard M. Cohen!
For more information, visit http://www.howardmcohen.com and be sure to check out the portfolio. Then contact hmc@howardmcohen.com to learn more about making your blog the most effective marketing weapon in your arsenal.