Marketing is one of the most fundamental elements of a successful business plan ? you could have the best product in the world but if nobody knows about it you wouldn't make a single sale!
From paid advertising and social marketing to media outreach and PR, the choices are endless.
However, the hub of your activity ? especially online ? should be your blog.
Many new companies fail to "get" the blogging culture and see it as an investment of money and time that they could spend elsewhere, but the truth is that a blog can make all of your other marketing campaigns a lot more successful.
Here are ten excellent reasons for you to use a blog as the hub of your marketing activity:
- It builds more traffic. If you want to drive targeted traffic to your business website, there are few better ways than by updating your blog regularly with news, information, tips and advice.
- It lets you get social. Combining a blog with your social media presence on Twitter and Facebook is perfect because you can share the content with new and existing followers to increase your potential customer base, build your brand and engage more with the real people who will use your services.
- It engages with your target audience. Instead of being another nameless, faceless company in a sea of search results, having a blog lets people connect with you on a personal level ? and if they know you, they'll be more likely to buy from you.
- It establishes you as an expert. By sharing up-to-date and relavant information about your niche, people who find you will start to think of you as an expert and trusted advisor ? not only does this raise your brand awareness, it will increase your conversions too.
- It builds a community. Bringing together like minded people is an excellent way to spread your product and your brand through word of mouth marketing. Not to mention, Google is changing and will reward sites that are actively engaging their audience, connecting with them socially and sharing high quality content. That means even more search engine traffic!
- It's better for customer service. Customers hate being put on hold or waiting until office hours to get in touch. Having FAQ blog posts, or announcements about changes to your product or service can easily be shared across social platforms to keep your customers up to date on what's going on. This open approach is just another way to form a relationship with your visitors.
- It lets you build a database. When you have a blog and a loyal following of readers, you can leverage this by capturing them as leads in a database. Offering a free product or trial is a good incentive, and it gives you a list of people who want to hear from you that you can market to, no matter what happens to your other traffic sources ? just be sure to keep offering them excellent content and exclusive deals!
- It's good for reputation management. People online can write anything about you and your business. If you receive negative reviews, it's possible to use your blog to manage it and ensure that if customers do read a negative comment, you have used your voice and authority to clearly explain the situation.
- It can generate free content. Once your blog is established you might be approached by guest bloggers, or you might ask your customers to write about their experiences, to write guest posts (like this one!). It's a good way to offer a different voice to your audience, while still being able to leverage it for search engine traffic, social media mentions and more.
- It tells you what customers want. Comments on the blog, questions sent via the contact form, search engine keyword statistics and surveys your audience fill out will all give you vital market intelligence on exactly what the people visiting your site are interested in. You can then tailor your content around this to increase conversions.
If you already have a website and you don't have a blog in place, then you're missing out on very high quality, targeted traffic that is very cost effective to acquire.
It allows you to build a reputation, stand out from the crowd, reach people on a personal level and will improve other channels of your marketing mix (like social) by giving you content to shout about.
How can you make a blog work for your business?
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You may also be interested in...Top 7 reasons to be a blogger
Why you should register your own .com domain
Business Blogging Blunder
Source: http://www.xaviermedia.com/webbing/2012/10/14/10-reasons-why-your-business-needs-a-blog/
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