Should your business get a blog?

Posted in Blogging

There are so many businesses nowadays both online and offline that it can be difficult for a business to identify what types of marketing they should concentrate on.

If you open up your Yellow Pages you will see thousands of listings for businesses but how do you choose which one you want to use?

Traditionally, when choosing a business it was common to ask friends for recommendations but nowadays, because so many of us live in cyberspace, it’s more common to send out a tweet to our virtual friends for a recommendation.

Cyberspace gives us instant gratification.    I don’t know about you but I don’t want to WAIT while I call a friend, leave a message, wait for them to call back and then look for where they put the magic number of the perfect plumber (that you later find went out of business 6 years ago!).  I want information now!

There are a number of ways nowadays to deliver information to your customers and prospects.    You can use social media like Facebook and Twitter to send out updates, you can use email or you can actually go further and give your customer and prospects information and build a relationship at the same time.

No matter the type of business that you have, one way to get more customers is to build a relationship with them.      Yes, that’s right don’t treat your customers like a number of wait for a friend of a customer to be referred – actually be proactive rather than reactive!

A few weeks ago I was shocked when doing a google search for a business in my  neighbourhood that not one business had a website!   There was nowhere that I could look and check out products, pictures and pricing.   All there was were stingy little yellow pages ads or directory listings – all cheap, nasty, out of date and giving out contact details but no information.    It was extremely frustrating.

I actually lie, I did find one website.   One of those great fancy flash things that by the time the page loads you could have had a three course dinner and then you had to “enter” the site.   Who knows what was beyond the Enter sign.  I was bored by then and my need for information was frustrated not fulfilled.

Using a blog can give out information to your prospects as well as providing a platform for interaction with your customers and prospects.   Comments that  users leave are extremely valuable feedback that a business gets for free.   You will find that the feedback users leave on your products or services, if implemented, could increase your profits in your business because your customers are telling you what they want.  All you need to do is deliver it.

Blogs are also a great way to engage  your prospects and visitors by providing surveys, polls and competitions.   All of these things can assist with your marketing, brand recognition and constant improvement of your business.

You can also use your blog to incorporate your social media status updates allowing for a cross platform interaction of prospects.    Oddly, some people use only one media platform.     What they fail to realise is that people are different.    People need to be engaged differently.   By using multi platforms you are best able to provide the marketing message in the format that your prospect wants.    For example, for prospects  you want short, quick bursts of information with no fluff then Twitter is  your platform, for text with discussion and other integration platforms then blogs is your answer,  for competitions, images, fun apps and updates then Facebook is your community.   If your customs prefer image based marketing then You Tube and other video sites is your platform etc.    I think you ge4t the message.    You don’t do what works for you, you do what the customer and prospect want.

Having your own blog and commenting on other blogs within your industry and related industries will quickly build brand name recognition amongst your prospects and visitors.  This online exposure really is a life long advertisement for your business, how you operate, what’s important to you and how you react and value your prospects and customers.

More important, having a blog together with other social media platforms allows you to build a relationship with your prospect and customers.   The best customers you can have are the customers that have already purchased from you if you maintain this relationship why would they want to leave?

Have fun with WP :)